The management had indicated Thursday at a CSE that a “first contingent” of 120 Poles from the Gliwice factory – producing Opel Astra – would arrive, then that 150 others would join them the following week, all for a mission of three months, accommodated by the company in the region and paid according to the French collective agreement for the sector.
“We had sought to play on efficiency in the group, with the principle of industrial solidarity, the group had then decided to bring in Gliwice employees affected by a weaker activity”, explained the communications manager of PSA Hordain, Jean-Pierre Papin.
“Given the emotion that this subject arouses”, which “we understand in the current context of the country”, – but also the pressure put by the government on the car manufacturer to give up – “we worked on a solution alternative “, allowing” to assemble this additional team “finally made up” mainly of temporary workers “, he said.
These temporary workers will therefore come “to replace a large part of Gliwice’s initially planned employees”, detailed Mr. Papin. This “solution” is an “alternative” to “meet demand”: this team, which will be made up of some 530 people, will however also include “some colleagues” from European PSA factories “who continue to suffer the effects of this crisis and for whom it is a united solution to allow them to have an activity. “
Earlier today, the Ministry of the Economy announced that the PSA car group had made a commitment to Minister Bruno Le Maire to reverse its decision to bring some of its Polish workers to France to strengthen its site teams d’Hordain. “In the current situation, companies must do everything to protect employment in France,” said the government.
It is a victory but it must call others. We will remain hyper vigilant.
Fabien Roussel, PCF deputy from the North.
An extraordinary CSE must ratify this new option, Monday morning, in the North, said Franck Théry secretary general of the CGT PSA d’Hordain. “It is a victory but it must call others. We will remain hyper vigilant. The arrival of the Polish workers at PSA Hordain is canceled, (…) but we will continue to fight for this to be the case also elsewhere “, in Moselle for example, said Fabien Roussel, PCF national secretary and deputy for the North.
In the Moselle plant in Trémery, which employs “fifteen” employees from the Mulhouse site as reinforcements, “it was announced that we were considering bringing in employees from other PSA sites in France and abroad” on the voluntary base, in particular German workers, said a spokesperson for the PSA factory in Tremery and the neighboring site in Metz, which employs 50 Polish workers from the Gliwice factory.
PSA had justified its decision to appeal to its Polish employees by explaining that the “brutal economic crisis” generated by the epidemic of Covid-19 required “to react with agility and efficiency, in order to ensure the sustainability of the PSA group”.
“We are at the stage of looking for solutions to find people to join our teams which are not complete, without using temporary workers” since there are still partial unemployment measures in the group, depending on the functions and the sites, said the spokeswoman for Metz.