“My parents worked there, my whole family worked there.
It is the economic lung, which sustains the surrounding villages and businesses.
There are no other big companies in the area”, slips Antoine, market gardener around Saint-Omer.
The shopkeeper packs up his shop after the clearance sale.
In this industrial basin, the setbacks of the glassworks of the giant Arc, the world leader in tableware, punctuate the conversations.
The seventh largest factory in France had to resort to partial unemployment for 1,600 of its 4,600 employees and is preparing to put five of its ten ovens on standby.
The reason: the explosion in gas prices in recent months, coupled with a significant drop in sales in the second half.
"Any increase of one euro in gas means that we have a million euro increase in our costs", specifies Guillaume Rabel-Suquet, director of human resources for Arc France and director of communication for the group.
“In 2021, we had a bill of 19 million and we are going to move to a bill of 75 million”.
If the company continued to operate in the same way, this bill could reach 220 million euros in 2023.
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Faced with this surge in energy costs, the group's leaders have therefore decided to shut down five of the site's nine furnaces for at least a few months.
Oven D, located in the city center, will be definitively shut down at the start of 2023. More than half of the ovens will therefore be gradually put to sleep to limit damage.
Production will be halved.
“I also have the feeling that we are taking advantage of this economic situation to put in place a new long-term strategy,” laments Frédéric Specque, central union representative at Arc CGT.
On the side of the majority union UNSA, we are also worried about the very serious social consequences of this crisis.
“What I see is that people are starting to get a little hungry at the end of the month.
“I am worried for my son but also for everyone.
For the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, because it is not just the staff who are not working, there are also the subcontractors.
For the surroundings, it will be a disaster”, worries Jean-Pierre, retired from the factory and father of a worker from Arc.