" It is shameful!
»Exclaims Deborah, the owner of the Irish pub located at the foot of the belfry of Bethune (Pas-de-Calais).
“You realize that some employees learned of the closure of the factory from their wives, who themselves learned from the media.
It's terrible to treat people like that!
I have quite a few clients who work at Bridgestone.
Some came last night
(Wednesday night)
and they had tears in their eyes!
"
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Around the cobbled main square, the sun has a hard time warming hearts.
In her bakery, Brigitte fulminates: “Everyone has only been talking about this since yesterday!
I am disgusted.
We all grew up with this factory.
My father worked there.
Personally, I hope I can hold out because a drop in clientele added to Covid could well push us to shut down my husband and me.
"Same heavy atmosphere at the café-PMU-tobacco:" I am worried, confides its manager Paul Liao.
For the moment we are struggling to realize but I think we will feel it very quickly.
I bought this business only two years ago, the health crisis has not helped us.
This news either.
"
"We tore the heart of this territory"
On leaving the factory, owned by the Japanese tire giant, the mines are gloomy: “We are downcast and angry,” says Cédric Cordowinus, unionized employee at Force Ouvrière.
It was all programmed.
For years we have been alerting and we have been told that it will be fine.
The director, with a smirk, announced it to us by throwing us videos, it's inhuman.
Behind the gate, Adrien Gauthier looks worried.
He is not an employee of Bridgestone but of the subcontractor cleaning company Samsic: “I've been working here for 16 years.
I am the head of a team of eleven people.
My life, and those of my colleagues, becomes a big question mark.
I have two children and some credits.
I don't plan anything anymore.
I have a lump in my stomach.
"
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In town hall also, it is time for anger.
Olivier Gacquerre, the UDI mayor of this city of 25,000 inhabitants, went to meet the employees.
“We all feel betrayed.
There is a desire to damage us psychologically.
They had planned everything, they drained the factory.
We tore out the heart of this territory, we tore out part of our history.
It is humanly very violent.
But we are mobilized to show that we are courageous people and steeped in talent.
"
Keep hope and propose an innovative project
The city council is impatiently waiting for the government to organize a meeting with Bridgestone Europe to ask for a break in the closure and to propose another industrial project (a meeting will be held on Monday in Béthune with Elisabeth Borne (Work) and Agnès Pannier-Runacher (Industry) with elected officials and unions).
“We have to invest, and we can find the means to make innovative products.
It goes through the modernization of the production tool, automation, digitization, digital.
It could help keep 4 to 500 jobs, ”he wants to believe.
“And to limit the breakage behind, continues Olivier Gacquerre, because with the subcontractors, 5,000 jobs are threatened today.
I have hope because I feel a collective desire to move forward together and find a plan B. ”
Thursday afternoon, the town hall posted a petition to say no to the closure of the plant.
Within hours, she had collected more than 17,000 signatures.
