Employees voted to end the blockade “within one voice”. The blockade of the Condat paper mills in Dordogne, at a standstill since the end of August, was lifted on Wednesday September 13 by employees after progress with management in the PES negotiation.
“They have made efforts on retirement remuneration and supralegal bonuses. They told us that there was still a way to negotiate.”reported to Agence France-Presse (AFP) Philippe Delord, CGT delegate. ” They [la direction] took the first step (…). But we will have to reblock if the negotiations do not go as far as we would like.warned the unionist.
Questioned by AFP, management welcomed “the responsibility of all stakeholders”. Out of some 400 positions at the Lardin-Saint-Lazare factory, the largest private employer in the department, 187 are threatened by the employment protection plan (PSE) under negotiation until October 11.
Market collapse
The management of Condat, owned by the Lecta group which employs 2,850 employees in seven factories, half of which in Spain, announced at the end of June the closure of a production line for double-sided coated paper, intended for printing books, magazines and advertising catalogues, due to a market collapse.
The inter-union is pleading for a transfer of the site to a buyer. “We went to Bercy on Monday and Tuesday, there will be other exchanges with the State, there is still something to do to save the machine 4”believes Jean-François Sarlat, elected CFE-CGC.
Lecta management is banking on line 8, specializing in label papers in particular. It highlights 140 million investments in this machine and a biom boiler – including 14 million coming from aid from Ademe and 19 million from a loan from the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region – for three years. “It’s not to close the factory”ured Wednesday the president of Lecta France, Alain Gaudré, on France Blue Périgord.
Lecta was born at the end of the 1990s from the merger of Cartiere del Garda (Italy), Condat and Torraspapel (Spain), bought by the CVC Capital Partners fund. In 2019, the group ped into the hands of other funds (Apollo, Cheyne Capital, Tikehau and Credit Suisse et Management). The parent company is now based in London, where it does not employ any employees, according to its latest annual report.
The World with AFP