The Government asked the oil groups this Friday for “efforts” on wages, in order to resolve the strikes that for several days have caused serious problems in the supply of fuel in France, in particular in TotalEnergies.
“I call on the companies in question, most of which still have good results, to also consider requests for salary increases,” Olivia Grégoire, Delegate Minister for Small and Medium Enterprises, told Franceinfo. “We expect companies … to make efforts towards employees.”
Tank trucks will be exceptionally authorized to circulate on Sunday due to “quite localized but significant difficulties”, the Deputy Minister of Transport, Clément Beaune, also announced at LCI, who will meet the carrier federations on Friday morning “to see locally where supplies.” can be improved”.
15% of service stations are affected
“We are doing everything possible so that this situation can be resolved in the coming days” and the Government is “in connection with Total to try to facilitate social dialogue,” he specified. France could “further” release strategic stocks to defuse the situation, Clément Beaune added.
Currently, 15% of service stations are affected by the shortage of one or more fuels, according to a figure cited by several ministers, mainly due to a wage strike at TotalEnergies refineries, but also due to the 20-cent discount on the bomb granted since September 1 by the group, in addition to the reduction of the State.
“We must not panic,” said the government spokesman, Olivier Véran, also questioned about these supply interruptions that affect all of France, in particular Hauts-de-France.
“We are not going to run out of fuel,” he said on BFMTV and RMC, adding that the government is “extremely attentive so that this social movement finds a solution as quickly as possible.”
“We are not here to bother people, we are there to show Total the dissatisfaction of the employees because wealth is not shared,” Thierry Defresne, secretary of the works council of the CGT of TotalEnergies, explained in RMC, referring to the announcement of the group of the payment of an additional extraordinary dividend of 2,600 million euros to its shareholders. “We give a lot to the shareholders, but we completely forget about the employees,” he charged. “There are fabulous profits and we don’t want to compensate for inflation.”
For its part, TotalEnergies did not report on the impact of the social conflict on its stations, limiting itself to telling AFP on Thursday that the situation was “stable.”
Source: BFM TV
