It is the hackneyed story of a family business founded in the 1950s,
which became a leader in its sector and which began the restructuring
and then the closure and sale of its production sites. It is above all
an episode revealing the state of fragmentation of the working class,
its division aggravated by the traps of representativeness and bourgeois
legality. It is finally the repression which falls when in complete
disarray, we find the reflex of direct action... ---- La Continentale de
Nutrition was one of the flagship brands of a local heritage, that of
the siblings Delpierre and his descendants. Its capital also consisted
of the various Continentale sites as well as the "Delpierre Mer et
tradition" factory. The family's influence on the port of
Boulogne-sur-mer led some of its members to head FROM-Nord(1) and the
local sailing club. Incidentally, they will sit on the urban community
and lead economic reflection networks...
After several decades of uninterrupted development, the company was
deployed across six sites in France, including one established since the
1990s in Vedène, in Vaucluse. In 2001, there was still talk of
increasing the production capacities of this factory in order to gain
share in southern Europe.
At the turn of the decade, the company's management announced a change
in policy. Arguing the rise in raw materials, northern European
competition and the shrinking of its main market in England, it declares
itself in industrial overcapacity. The 70,000 tonnes produced in the
south of France are equivalent, according to her, to what the company
has been losing financially for several years. Consequently, it closes
the Vedène factory against the backdrop of a merger with the Villeneuve
Pet Food brand. The idyll ends short and ends in court. The Agen
commercial court then ordered the transfer of the Villeneuvoise factory
to another family group, that of the German Tiernarhung Deuerer.
What then happens highlights the often insurmountable obstacles that
restructuring places in the face of struggling employees. Restructuring
is not the painful necessity that capitalists use as an excuse for every
factory closure. Only economists, journalists and politicians pretend to
believe it. Restructurings are a weapon in the course of the struggle
between classes, nothing less. They are a test compounded by the effects
of the integration of trade unionism into the State under the guise of
"representativeness" and which in the present case will take the form of
a debacle.
The majority CFDT in Boulogne-sur-mer as well as in the group will give
a favorable opinion and validate the management's social plan costing
7.5 million euros in exchange for an increase of 1.5 million in the
layoff plan. This decision condemned not only the hundred workers at the
Vedène factory, but also ultimately those who with the stroke of a pen
delivered their counterparts to the ax of capitalist rationalization. A
Faustian act dictated by the illusion that one can save one's skin by
making a pact with the devil, a choice of localist withdrawal which
marked a moral, social and human defeat.
Suffice to say that the workers at the Vaucluse factory will not hear it
that way(2). They will engage in a struggle which will last 431 days
including 315 of occupation in order to prevent any removal of the
machines. Indeed, CEO Thierry Delpierre had suggested that he wanted to
reorganize the group's production by repatriating production from Vedène
to Boulogne-sur-mer.
After more than a year of struggle, the majority CGT in Vedène will
welcome the announcement of a buyer from the logistics sector as a
victory. But as is often the case, hope will be betrayed. In 2023, C&D
Foods, the new name of Continentale, sold the former factory land to a
real estate investor. End of the first round and start of the second...
Quickly, the CFDT and its Boulogne members understood that their
decision would not spare them the fate initially reserved for their
Vedènais counterparts. The implacable logic of capital is foreign to any
compromise with labor when its vital interests are at stake. Localist
illusions will in no way modify the course of the issue which will end
with a new worker defeat against a backdrop of strong resentment... A
background investment by Crédit Agricole is certainly committed to
recapitalizing the company but in return 180 workers at the
Boulogne-sur-mer site will in turn have to be made redundant.
And as on such an occasion, the survivors will have to take action so
that the commitments made by the financiers, in particular the first of
them, Crédit Agricole, come to fruition.
It is therefore for actions carried out in 2014 as part of this
restructuring that the Boulogne justice system sentenced in February
2024 three workers at Continentale, which has since passed into the
hands of the Irish group C&D Foods.
Heard only in 2019 because they were "the only ones to have been
identified", it was only three years later that they were put under
investigation... Crédit Agricole accuses them of having attacked three
of its local branches by having: "pasted posters on the windows, broke
them, threw firecrackers and paint, set fire to two ATMs, burned tires,
finally attacked the door of the Boulogne agency with a battering
ram..."(3 )
The three workers charged declared having acted "in the sole interest of
saving their skin" and "it was by having carried out these actions that
Crédit Agricole gave in and that they were able to keep their jobs.»
This is precisely what the court accuses them of, demanding that they
pay nearly 70,000 euros to the banker and 1,000 euros suspended for the
criminal part.
Crédit Agricole, one of the three instigators with the State and the
FNSEA of the liquidation of the small peasantry for the benefit of
agro-business, bellows against the deterioration of a few facades, which
has reached its highest historical level with a 19.6% increase in
profits in 2023! Crédit Agricole, the first banking group in France and
above all the first chouine insurer ten years after the facts against
spilled paint and broken glass... This justice hardly needed more to
recall here the essence of its right bourgeois and confirm the exclusive
interests of its own.
If afterwards, the lawyer said he was surprised by the severity of the
sentence and the amount extorted from the workers, for our part, we are not.
This trial takes place in a context of increased repression of social
struggles, revolts in working-class neighborhoods and mobilizations on
environmental issues. The CGT claims that more than 1,000 trade
unionists are currently the subject of legal proceedings. Darmanin,
recently cleared by the same justice system, is demanding the
dissolution of La Défense Collective de Rennes(5). In June 2023, six
Capécure workers were judged at the Boulogne TGI with the same
harshness, following their arrest during actions carried out against the
loss of pensions.
It is time to take stock of the situation, particularly at the local
level where the confrontation with justice systematically takes place in
the worst possible conditions, that is to say without organization or
experienced collective defense. At best, one union sign or another will
contribute financially to the costs of the trial, or even the
organization of a festive event will make it possible to raise some
funds. Sometimes, a gathering will be held outside the court but
systematically we will delegate the responsibility of the defense to the
lawyers, considered to be best able to limit the damage.
By allowing ourselves to be dispossessed and isolated in this way, by
confirming and legitimizing the inter-personal nature of bourgeois
justice, we leave it a free hand to repress us as it pleases(5). The
class struggle does not stop at the door of the court, it must continue
inside, collectively, the only real and serious guarantee in the face of
arbitrariness. The times to come will see the emergence of new struggles
that the State will repress ever more brutally as the crisis worsens. We
must prepare for it now by trying to rise to the collective challenges
that await us.
Boulogne-sur-mer, 02/25/2024
Notes
(1)FROM-Nord: group of producers (230 boats and 100,000 tonnes of fish
controlled).
(2) "A financial partner would be ready to inject money into the company
on the condition of implementing the social plan," explained, indignant,
Taïeb Hallal, CGT delegate from Continentale. "We will not accept
Vedène's sacrifice," added Fred Laurent, departmental secretary of the
CGT. Source: Le Dauphiné Libéré. Nov 10, 2011
(3)Source VdN, Boulogne-sur-mer edition.
(4) Read on: https://defensecollective.noblogs.org
(5) The Getaway site has collected some useful texts on the question of
defense, from which we extract this passage which deals with the place
and role of the lawyer in a collective defense strategy: "From then on,
the lawyer must be at the service of those who struggle. It is not up to
him to lead the political fight for them, even if it manifests itself in
the context of a trial. He puts his knowledge of legal techniques, his
knowledge of the judicial mechanism at their service, and uses the place
granted to him by the bourgeoisie within the repressive system itself to
help those who fight this system.» In: Getaway Archive:
https://getaway.eu.org/IMG/pdf/liasse_01_defense.pdf
http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4130
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
which became a leader in its sector and which began the restructuring
and then the closure and sale of its production sites. It is above all
an episode revealing the state of fragmentation of the working class,
its division aggravated by the traps of representativeness and bourgeois
legality. It is finally the repression which falls when in complete
disarray, we find the reflex of direct action... ---- La Continentale de
Nutrition was one of the flagship brands of a local heritage, that of
the siblings Delpierre and his descendants. Its capital also consisted
of the various Continentale sites as well as the "Delpierre Mer et
tradition" factory. The family's influence on the port of
Boulogne-sur-mer led some of its members to head FROM-Nord(1) and the
local sailing club. Incidentally, they will sit on the urban community
and lead economic reflection networks...
After several decades of uninterrupted development, the company was
deployed across six sites in France, including one established since the
1990s in Vedène, in Vaucluse. In 2001, there was still talk of
increasing the production capacities of this factory in order to gain
share in southern Europe.
At the turn of the decade, the company's management announced a change
in policy. Arguing the rise in raw materials, northern European
competition and the shrinking of its main market in England, it declares
itself in industrial overcapacity. The 70,000 tonnes produced in the
south of France are equivalent, according to her, to what the company
has been losing financially for several years. Consequently, it closes
the Vedène factory against the backdrop of a merger with the Villeneuve
Pet Food brand. The idyll ends short and ends in court. The Agen
commercial court then ordered the transfer of the Villeneuvoise factory
to another family group, that of the German Tiernarhung Deuerer.
What then happens highlights the often insurmountable obstacles that
restructuring places in the face of struggling employees. Restructuring
is not the painful necessity that capitalists use as an excuse for every
factory closure. Only economists, journalists and politicians pretend to
believe it. Restructurings are a weapon in the course of the struggle
between classes, nothing less. They are a test compounded by the effects
of the integration of trade unionism into the State under the guise of
"representativeness" and which in the present case will take the form of
a debacle.
The majority CFDT in Boulogne-sur-mer as well as in the group will give
a favorable opinion and validate the management's social plan costing
7.5 million euros in exchange for an increase of 1.5 million in the
layoff plan. This decision condemned not only the hundred workers at the
Vedène factory, but also ultimately those who with the stroke of a pen
delivered their counterparts to the ax of capitalist rationalization. A
Faustian act dictated by the illusion that one can save one's skin by
making a pact with the devil, a choice of localist withdrawal which
marked a moral, social and human defeat.
Suffice to say that the workers at the Vaucluse factory will not hear it
that way(2). They will engage in a struggle which will last 431 days
including 315 of occupation in order to prevent any removal of the
machines. Indeed, CEO Thierry Delpierre had suggested that he wanted to
reorganize the group's production by repatriating production from Vedène
to Boulogne-sur-mer.
After more than a year of struggle, the majority CGT in Vedène will
welcome the announcement of a buyer from the logistics sector as a
victory. But as is often the case, hope will be betrayed. In 2023, C&D
Foods, the new name of Continentale, sold the former factory land to a
real estate investor. End of the first round and start of the second...
Quickly, the CFDT and its Boulogne members understood that their
decision would not spare them the fate initially reserved for their
Vedènais counterparts. The implacable logic of capital is foreign to any
compromise with labor when its vital interests are at stake. Localist
illusions will in no way modify the course of the issue which will end
with a new worker defeat against a backdrop of strong resentment... A
background investment by Crédit Agricole is certainly committed to
recapitalizing the company but in return 180 workers at the
Boulogne-sur-mer site will in turn have to be made redundant.
And as on such an occasion, the survivors will have to take action so
that the commitments made by the financiers, in particular the first of
them, Crédit Agricole, come to fruition.
It is therefore for actions carried out in 2014 as part of this
restructuring that the Boulogne justice system sentenced in February
2024 three workers at Continentale, which has since passed into the
hands of the Irish group C&D Foods.
Heard only in 2019 because they were "the only ones to have been
identified", it was only three years later that they were put under
investigation... Crédit Agricole accuses them of having attacked three
of its local branches by having: "pasted posters on the windows, broke
them, threw firecrackers and paint, set fire to two ATMs, burned tires,
finally attacked the door of the Boulogne agency with a battering
ram..."(3 )
The three workers charged declared having acted "in the sole interest of
saving their skin" and "it was by having carried out these actions that
Crédit Agricole gave in and that they were able to keep their jobs.»
This is precisely what the court accuses them of, demanding that they
pay nearly 70,000 euros to the banker and 1,000 euros suspended for the
criminal part.
Crédit Agricole, one of the three instigators with the State and the
FNSEA of the liquidation of the small peasantry for the benefit of
agro-business, bellows against the deterioration of a few facades, which
has reached its highest historical level with a 19.6% increase in
profits in 2023! Crédit Agricole, the first banking group in France and
above all the first chouine insurer ten years after the facts against
spilled paint and broken glass... This justice hardly needed more to
recall here the essence of its right bourgeois and confirm the exclusive
interests of its own.
If afterwards, the lawyer said he was surprised by the severity of the
sentence and the amount extorted from the workers, for our part, we are not.
This trial takes place in a context of increased repression of social
struggles, revolts in working-class neighborhoods and mobilizations on
environmental issues. The CGT claims that more than 1,000 trade
unionists are currently the subject of legal proceedings. Darmanin,
recently cleared by the same justice system, is demanding the
dissolution of La Défense Collective de Rennes(5). In June 2023, six
Capécure workers were judged at the Boulogne TGI with the same
harshness, following their arrest during actions carried out against the
loss of pensions.
It is time to take stock of the situation, particularly at the local
level where the confrontation with justice systematically takes place in
the worst possible conditions, that is to say without organization or
experienced collective defense. At best, one union sign or another will
contribute financially to the costs of the trial, or even the
organization of a festive event will make it possible to raise some
funds. Sometimes, a gathering will be held outside the court but
systematically we will delegate the responsibility of the defense to the
lawyers, considered to be best able to limit the damage.
By allowing ourselves to be dispossessed and isolated in this way, by
confirming and legitimizing the inter-personal nature of bourgeois
justice, we leave it a free hand to repress us as it pleases(5). The
class struggle does not stop at the door of the court, it must continue
inside, collectively, the only real and serious guarantee in the face of
arbitrariness. The times to come will see the emergence of new struggles
that the State will repress ever more brutally as the crisis worsens. We
must prepare for it now by trying to rise to the collective challenges
that await us.
Boulogne-sur-mer, 02/25/2024
Notes
(1)FROM-Nord: group of producers (230 boats and 100,000 tonnes of fish
controlled).
(2) "A financial partner would be ready to inject money into the company
on the condition of implementing the social plan," explained, indignant,
Taïeb Hallal, CGT delegate from Continentale. "We will not accept
Vedène's sacrifice," added Fred Laurent, departmental secretary of the
CGT. Source: Le Dauphiné Libéré. Nov 10, 2011
(3)Source VdN, Boulogne-sur-mer edition.
(4) Read on: https://defensecollective.noblogs.org
(5) The Getaway site has collected some useful texts on the question of
defense, from which we extract this passage which deals with the place
and role of the lawyer in a collective defense strategy: "From then on,
the lawyer must be at the service of those who struggle. It is not up to
him to lead the political fight for them, even if it manifests itself in
the context of a trial. He puts his knowledge of legal techniques, his
knowledge of the judicial mechanism at their service, and uses the place
granted to him by the bourgeoisie within the repressive system itself to
help those who fight this system.» In: Getaway Archive:
https://getaway.eu.org/IMG/pdf/liasse_01_defense.pdf
http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4130
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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