A few thousand people gathered on Saturday morning outside the Renault factory in Maubeuge (Nord), which has been shutdown since Friday, to demonstrate against the automaker's decision to cut 15,000 jobs worldwide, including 4,600 in France. The demonstrators started shortly after 10:00 am, at the call of the factory inter-union (CGT, CFDT, CFTC, CFE-CGC, South), a march from the site to reach the town hall of Maubeuge, in about 6 km away.
The site, which employs around 2,100 people of all statuses, has been shutdown since Friday morning. The manufacturer's management, in difficulty, plans to transfer production of the Kangoo electric utilities to Douai - about 2,900 employees -, about 70 km away, which would inherit a new platform.
An industrial “earthquake”
"It is an earthquake that is happening. We want to keep our business here. Today this demonstration is very important, even if it is only a first step, to show the government and Renault that the employees and the inhabitants of this district are attached to this company and that we are supported. We need these jobs, otherwise it's a whole territory that will die! ”, Jérôme Delvaux, secretary of the CGT-MCA union told AFP.
"We were told that we were the best factory in Europe that we had nothing to fear, and today we are told that we are going to close to put everything in Douai?" We can't let that go ... ”, indignant Jean-Marc Pelleriaux, 61, trainer in the retouching area, member of the CGT. "The Kangoo must stay at MCA", "Let us defend our jobs, not the transfer of the factory from Maubeuge to Douai", "Senard: betrayal, Macron: keep your word!", Could we read on the banners. "It is not the employers who will make the law, true democracy is here!", Chanted also the demonstrators, almost all of whom wore a mask.
Many elected officials with tricolor scarves also paraded in the Tuesday procession, some 250 people - elected officials, unionists and employees of the MCA factory in Maubeuge (Maubeuge construction automobile) - including the president of Hauts-de-France Xavier Bertrand had already mobilized. "The fight has only just begun," said Maubeuge DVD mayor Arnaud Decagny.