WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, OCL CA #335 - Closure of YARA Montoir (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Last month we explained how the fertilizer production plant of the
multinational Yara, based in Montoir de Bretagne near Saint-Nazaire,
constituted a threat, and how a group of associations were fighting to
bring the installations up to standard. On October 30, after the death
of a worker on the site, Yara France announced the closure of the
factory and 139 layoffs as a result. ---- Would it have taken a death?
---- A 50-year-old temporary worker, working for a scaffolding company
carrying out maintenance operations, fell ill on October 24 at the start
of the afternoon, and his death was noted by emergency services on the
site. site at 4 p.m. No information was released at the time of this
death. It will be necessary to wait until October 30 and the Central
Social Economic Committee (CSEC) of the group meeting in Paris, for this
death at work to be revealed at the same time as the transformation of
the Montoir production site which was on the agenda of the meeting.

The cause of this death was immediately attributed to ammonia fumes,
which are the subject of recurring complaints from many employees. The
company affirms, however, that production being stopped for maintenance,
the reasons are other. The toxicological analyzes of the first autopsy
did not yield anything conclusive, and a judicial investigation is open
to determine the causes of death. Just like another investigation opened
in 2018 for the death of a worker following a fall from scaffolding in
the same place, and which has still not been concluded... As with many
deaths at work, it is probable that the causes of this death will be
lost in the legal meanders...

Closure of facilities...
Yara France has 583 employees, 3 industrial sites (Montoir in
Loire-Atlantique, Ambes in Gironde, Le Havre in Seine maritime) and a
2022 turnover of 1.7 billion euros. The CESC of October 30 recorded the
end of fertilizer production at Montoir, under the pretext that the site
would be in deficit of 40 million euros following a drop in consumption
of nitrogen fertilizers in France. However, the multinational would
maintain a location in Montoir which would become a logistics platform
for importing fertilizers and a "state-of-the-art unit for mixing and
impregnating tailor-made fertilizers". The main consequence of this
"restructuring" would be the elimination of 139 positions out of the 170
in the factory.

The closure of production is indeed the company's refusal to bring its
facilities up to environmental and safety standards. Yara has chosen to
exploit the industrial tool to the limit, and prefers to get rid of it
rather than invest in a refurbishment estimated at between 80 and 100
million euros. These layoffs and the social plan are also a moment in
the balance of power with the State, associations and unions: employment
blackmail and a clean slate policy are always possible for a
multinational, and we must not not be too restrictive with the
heavyweights of agro-industry. Spread the word!

...which does not resolve anything fundamentally
The site has a storage authorization for 112,000 tonnes of fertilizer.
It will remain a high-threshold Sévéso site, as it is subject to a
first-order explosion risk. Storage conditions will continue to expose
the environment to risks of pollution, particularly with regard to
runoff and groundwater contamination. The decontamination of the site
will not be on the agenda, in any case nothing has been announced in
this direction. The conditions for mixing and impregnating fertilizers
on site will probably involve fumes of fine particles and other volatile
organic components (VOCs), as will freight operations for imported
fertilizers... Furthermore, the factory management announces a
continuation of production for another 6 months, in dangerous conditions
for employees and the environment that we know, in order to liquidate
stocks and put in place a social plan.

The battle continues on different fronts.
It is for all these reasons that the collective of associations
maintains its request for administrative closure of the site until it is
brought up to standard, which would allow employees to continue to
receive their salaries while the work is carried out. A meeting to this
effect was requested from the Prefect, to give him the petition and its
3000 signatures, but also to demand to know more about the
industrialist's projects and the guarantees requested by the authorities
on this occasion.

The announcement of the shutdown of the factory, the 139 redundancies,
and the elimination of 800 indirect jobs according to the unions, caused
a stir in the Nazaire region. The CGT and CFDT of Yara have launched a
call for a strike on the Montoir site, and are calling on the population
to support them, from November 22, the date of the start of the "job
protection plan for reason" procedure. economic" that the unions
contest. In this context, expert assessment procedures on the economic
viability of the site have been announced.

Towards a class struggle for the living?
The collective of associations which have led the campaign against Yara
since September have made contact with the employees in the struggle,
and are expected to join the strike pickets in front of the factory on
November 22. How can we reconcile the fight for employment and the
economic survival of employees, and that for the environment and the
health of populations? How can we admit that there are harmful jobs that
we must do without in order to replace them with socially useful
production? These are fundamental questions if we want to put an end to
this false opposition between class struggle and the struggle for life
which is too often exploited by capitalism and the supporters of growth
at all costs.

Perhaps answers to these questions will begin to be developed
collectively on the banks of the Loire in the coming months.

OCL Saint-Nazaire
November 20, 2023.

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4015
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