The CGT lists on a map 286 job reduction plans across France since September 2023. Up to 200,000 jobs could be eliminated.
It is a document which shows the extent of job losses that have occurred in France for almost 15 months. The CGT unveiled on Wednesday afternoon a map of France which lists all the jobs lost or threatened between September 2023 and November 2024.
In total, the union organization counts 286 job reduction plans. And few geographical areas are spared from the phenomenon which particularly affects the Grand-Est, Hauts-de-France, Normandy, the Rhône valley as well as a good part of the Atlantic coast.
The secondary sector is largely affected by this wave of social plans since 210 industrial sites have been identified. In detail, 70,586 are directly threatened or even eliminated, including 30,870 for industry alone. Considering the indirect repercussions in the industry, the CGT estimates that the number of jobs affected varies in a range from 128,250 to 200,330.
The damaged metallurgy
In detail, the map shows the great difficulties of the metallurgical sector since it alone includes 13,000 direct jobs lost or threatened. This is almost twice as much as the chemical industries and their 7,000 direct jobs eliminated or threatened. These two sectors of activity illustrate the industrial breakdown that has been at work for several years in the automotive sector and which is spreading among the ranks of equipment manufacturers.
Guest of BFMTV, the confederal secretary of the CGT David Gistau had suffered the closure of the SAM foundry in 2021. “At the time, we had alerted Bruno Le Maire and Emmanuel Macron of the context of automobile subcontracting equipment manufacturers and nothing “has not been done to prevent what has since spread,” he notes with bitterness. The union representative deplores the fact that “employees, their families and the territories” are always the first to bear the brunt of the adaptation time necessary for equipment manufacturers and car manufacturers to transition from thermal engines to electric models.
“The situation is getting worse because the price of electric vehicles is extremely high and the French, like many Europeans, cannot afford to buy these vehicles today.”
As such, he denounces the strategy of major French manufacturers who are relocating the manufacturing of cars to countries where production costs are lower such as Romania or China: “The desire is not to make accessible vehicles but increasingly high profit rates and this raises the question: how can the State subsidize Renault and Stellantis without requiring them to source from French equipment manufacturers?”
An acceleration in the number of social plans
For its part, the tertiary sector is not left out since commerce has seen nearly 10,000 direct jobs lost, to which are added 6,000 in the banking and insurance sector. The same goes for the public sector and more particularly the health and social sectors recently affected by a resurgence of job cut plans.
As such, this acceleration is a trend observed overall since no less than 120 job cuts plans were implemented over the period from July to November 2024, a large majority of which (99) since the start of the school year. Among the most notorious are those announced by Auchan and Michelin at the beginning of the month or more recently by ArcelorMittal.
