At Ateliers de la Haute-Garonne, a Toulouse aeronautical subcontracting company, management is making life difficult for workers with systematic repression that has been going on for almost a year. Indeed, for this year alone, more than one disciplinary summons per month was sent to employees according to the CGT accounts, with some dismissals as a result.
More than one disciplinary interview per month for a year, and three employees currently awaiting a decision on their fate
Management increases the number of disciplinary interviews for any reason. “ They cut you off and belittle you for everything you say » report the employees, who describe a direction “ very virulent » during interviews. “ You say to yourself: aren't they going to find something to fire me? At some point you become paranoid » agrees Simon Gazano, turner-miller and CGT AHG delegate. Furthermore, management does not hesitate to go as far as dismissal for aberrant reasons. “ It's been almost uninterrupted since the start of the year. To my knowledge, before, there were no layoffs or layoffs like that. There were warnings for cell phone use or smoking but they were still warnings » explains the union delegate.
To date, there have already been eleven summonses in ten months, and three employees are currently waiting for management to decide, alone, on the sanction that will be applied to them. In the social and economic committee (CSE), the CGT asked a few months ago for a commission with elected union officials to examine the merits of the sanctions, but was refused. “ You feel like you're in prison, like you're being stalked, that someone's always looking over your shoulder. It causes immense stress. It's getting worse and worse. The colleagues are really not good at work, and they are fed up. They don't understand: the guy works and, at the slightest thing, we throw it in your face » says Simon Gazano, CGT AHG delegate. His union denounces increasing repression which generates serious psychosocial risks for workshop workers.
The repression particularly affects workers assigned to the quality control sector. In November, one of them was criticized in a disciplinary interview for having left his position to request information from a colleague. The HR manager asked him to find out what he was doing before he returned to his post. A little later, when returning from filling his water bottle, HR criticizes him for going to get water during his working hours.
For his part, CGT union delegate Simon Gazano was criticized by HR for smoking a cigarette outside while the machines were running. On October 25, HR sent him a “ invitation to an interview prior to a disciplinary sanction of up to [son] dismissal for misconduct » to summon him to his offices on November 14. The supervisor vehemently reproached a second inspection worker for having inspected “only one batch” of 21 “macaroons”, the resin pucks on which the screws to be inspected under the microscope are mounted, since taking up the post, and ordered him to follow him to HR. The employee refused and resumed his tasks before the supervisor became “even more angry” and took him to HR who did not let him explain. He was immediately laid off as a precautionary measure but the employee did not want to agree to sign his notice of layoff. He was finally escorted back to his car, at the exit of the company, and will be summoned in a few days.
« Behind the little pretext, there is a precise goal. As luck would have it, they start monitoring statistics when they never did » explains Simon Gazano, CGT AHG union delegate. While the CGT section represents more than 60% of the votes in the workers' college in the 2019 and 2023 elections, Simon Gazano is not the only one of the seven elected officials to have been targeted by the management. A substitute, who also worked in inspection, was dismissed in July for a number of items checked that was higher or lower than the standards set by management. Same situation for another worker in the sector: “ She would have validated her first control batch too late. Except that she trained people, that sometimes you have computer problems or you don't have the tools. HR wouldn't hear anything: two days of layoff » explains the union delegate. A few days later, she was criticized for validating too quickly and she learned that she was fired.
A repressive turn to discipline workers
Many other examples could be added to this already long list. But already, the objective is already clear: management is seeking to install a climate of terror within the factory. If this repression has taken a turn over the past year, it is far from being the result of chance. Indeed, it comes after several years where workers had raised their heads and developed a combative CGT union. They notably imposed the closure of the factory at the start of the Covid 19 pandemic due to the lack of health resources.
In June 2021, workers organized the first strike in the company in more than forty years, demanding salary increases. This had deeply worried the management of AHG, but also that of Airbus, of which the Ateliers de la Haute-Garonne is a major subcontractor. This strike made it possible to extract significant income increases conceded afterwards by management with the creation of new bonuses.
After that, management took measures to restructure work to prevent any form of employee organization: Removal of dead time between teams (which served as a time for general meetings), change of schedules and breaks between workshops, relocation of certain workshops. All this was accompanied by new recruitment processes emphasizing the character of the new recruits and their potential for rebellion.
Employees express their fed up
Faced with this situation, the workers decided to stop letting it happen. A petition calling for “an end to all disciplinary action” was launched by the CGT AHG and collected the signatures of more than half of the workers on permanent contracts. “ Among the workers, a large majority signed it without thinking about it and some engineers from the design offices also signed it. » rejoices Simon Gazano who explains: “ It was a colleague's idea. Others weren't convinced at first, but at the end of the day, when they saw the number of signatures, they admitted they had been a little pessimistic. It surprised and re-motivated them ».
More broadly, the situation experienced by AHG workers echoes a generalized repression which has particularly hit union activists since the end of the battle against pension reform. An emblematic example of this repression is the case of Christian Porta, CGT delegate for Neuhauser, who, with his colleagues, succeeded in forcing the management of the agribusiness giant Invivo to bend, which was seeking to dismiss him completely illegally. An exemplary battle against repression recounted in the film “ If it touches one of us » which will be broadcast in Toulouse on Tuesday November 26 at the Utopia cinema in Borderouge.
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