Prime Minister Jean Castex assured this Thursday evening that the government would
"discuss step by step"
with the leaders of the Bridgestone company, threatened with closure, and
"convince them to invest"
.
Read also: Bridgestone: a difficult reclassification
“Bridgestone made a very bad choice,”
said Jean Castex, interviewed on France 2 during his first big oral.
“It is a company (...) which is currently at the head of difficulties because we are going to tell ourselves, it made very bad investment choices.
It's a company that has positioned itself very poorly in the economic market, ”
he said.
The Prime Minister assured that the government
"will discuss step by step with them to convince them to invest"
on their work tool.
“We're going to help them.
We do not forbid anything ”
, promised the Prime Minister, considering that
“ the game will be very complicated ”
.
"We will not let you down"
, he assured the two factory employees who came to participate in the France 2 program, adding that the recovery plan would allow, in the event of closure, to find
"individual solutions"
.
863 employees threatened
First employer in the city of Béthune (Pas-de-Calais), Bridgestone, which employs 863 people, brutally announced in mid-September the
“permanent cessation”
of the site's activity by 2021, citing overcapacity of production in Europe and competition from low-cost Asian brands.
The Japanese manufacturer then assured to want to limit as much as possible the number of layoffs thanks to measures of pre-retirement, internal or external reclassification of employees, and the search for a buyer for the site.