Fuel: the TotalEnergies strike raises concerns, three Cannes stations partially out of stock
On Thursday 8 October, the CGT blocked fuel shipments at several refineries, including La Mède. This Friday, 28 stations in the Alpes-Maritimes are reporting partial outages, including three in Cannes.
Translated from the French original. Lire en français
At the call of the CGT union, some TotalEnergies employees blocked fuel shipments on Thursday 8 October at the production sites of Normandy, near Le Havre, Donges (Loire-Atlantique) and the La Mède biorefinery (Bouches-du-Rhône), in a 24-hour strike for jobs and wages.
Between 50 and 60% of shift staff at these sites went on strike on Thursday, according to Éric Sellini, CGT coordinator for the group, quoted by AFP. The company used a different scope and counted around 2% of strikers across all its refineries and biorefineries, saying it continues to supply its network "through its various logistical means". In Donges, the CGT says "nothing is leaving the refinery"; management says pipeline shipments from the site operated on Thursday.
On the distribution side, 29 service stations of the Argedis subsidiary closed in the afternoon because of the strike, according to the CGT; management counted 23, out of the subsidiary's roughly 180 stations and the group's 3,300. The movement affected all of France, with particular intensity in Brittany and the Île-de-France region, where it could be extended this Friday, according to the CGT.
The demands
The union is demanding a 200-euro monthly raise for everyone, a minimum base salary of 1.2 times the SMIC, the hiring of temporary workers and vacant posts filled with permanent contracts, denouncing "under-pressure" staffing and "massive" use of temping, fixed-term contracts and subcontracting. The strike call was maintained despite management's announcement of a 1,000-euro advance on the annual bonus. The group's net profit reached 11.2 billion dollars in the first half, up 73% year on year, according to AFP.
Three stations partially out of stock in Cannes
Strikers are meeting this Friday morning in general assemblies to decide what follows. "We will see at the end of the day whether we extend the movement this Friday 9 October, depending on the level of participation in the strike," the CGT said on Thursday, quoted by Roole.
Against the backdrop of these tensions and logistical difficulties linked to the Middle East conflict, the fuel-compare tracker listed 28 partially out-of-stock stations in the Alpes-Maritimes this Friday: an Avia station on avenue Maréchal Juin (E85, LPG and E10 temporarily out), an independent station on avenue du Dr Picaud (SP95, E85 and LPG) and the Intermarché on avenue Francis Tonner in Cannes La Bocca (LPG). No direct link is established between these outages and Thursday's strike.
The price cap practised by the group has led to a rush of motorists to its stations, according to the CGT, which is demanding a pay rise for station employees "on the front line" facing the "influx of customers".
