The power transition is every now and then offered as a possibility to revitalize the French economic system, whilst permitting to answer environmental demanding situations. Some of the many actors concerned within the commercial initiatives related to this transition, industry unions stay little provide within the debates. A box find out about of the conversion undertaking of the Grandpuits refinery, within the Seine-et-Marne, highlights their position and the boundaries in their room for manoeuvre.
Historically, industry unions are very provide within the commercial sector. They’ve additionally contributed to fresh pondering at the fascinating renewal of trade inside the vital power transition. That is evidenced via the release of the industry union motion plan for trade and the surroundings via the CGT, which it followed in November 2023. This initiative introduced an afternoon of dialogue in Might 2024, attended via round 700 activists, in addition to lots of the main applicants within the 2024 Ecu elections.
The case of the Grandpuits refinery, within the Seine-et-Marne, gives a captivating case find out about of the position of industry unions in an commercial undertaking connected to the power transition. In 2020, TotalEnergies introduced a re-conversion of the refinery to a “zero oil” platform for 2024-2026. This new platform used to be initially intended to encompass a “biofuels” manufacturing facility, a “bioplastics” manufacturing facility comprised of biomass of plant or animal foundation, and a chemical recycling plant for plastics. The “bioplastics” manufacturing facility used to be deserted in June 2023 in prefer of a mechanical plastic recycling manufacturing facility and a biogas manufacturing plant.
The reconversion began in 2020 will do away with a number of hundred jobs. What used to be the position of industry unions throughout this commercial reconversion, justified via the crucial of power transition via TotalEnergies? How do those organizations place themselves in the case of the environmental justification of this commercial reconversion? Analysis carried out via interviews with activists from quite a lot of refinery union organizations sheds gentle on those problems.
Transition with out exact session
The phrases of the reconstruction of the Grandpuits refinery have been determined via the control of TotalEnergies and, in line with a number of executives interviewed, simplest Patrick Pouianne, the corporate’s CEO. The course of business initiatives and the problem of employment don’t seem to be the topic of negotiations that unions, each on website and within the corporation, may just affect.
A number of unions have condemned the loss of session on employment, given the masses of redundancies led to via retraining, however corporation control has now not broached the topic. The social discussion throughout the Employment Coverage Plan (PSE) used to be targeted completely on social improve measures (MSP), this is, at the stipulations of departure of staff who depart the manufacturing facility and the stipulations of reclassification of those that proceed to paintings within the manufacturing facility. If the focal point of negotiations on measures to improve staff throughout corporation restructuring is a commonplace state of affairs (1), the unions on the native point nonetheless remorseful about it.
The union organizations representing the manufacturing facility needed to give a written opinion at the refinery conversion undertaking, however this opinion is only advisory. All industry union organizations expressed a destructive opinion in regards to the undertaking, which, on the other hand, didn’t exchange its orientation.
The position of social discussion within the subject
The case of the Grandpuits refinery due to this fact calls into query the modalities and the position of social discussion within the power transition coverage. The commercial side, and thus the environmental side, the session of the representatives of the Social and Financial Committee (CSE) throughout the PSE leaves simplest the likelihood for the latter to boost “questions, without any real right to follow-up or the possibility of suspending the project until the alternatives are fully examined”.
Moreover, in this sort of restructuring, there’s a important distance between the undertaking decision-makers and the employer’s representatives throughout collective bargaining. The latter to find themselves “having to execute a plan over which they have no strategic control”, which additional limits the probabilities of negotiating the content material and causes for commercial initiatives.
A legislation that boosts the absence of a task for industry union organizations
The Local weather and Resilience Regulation of August 22, 2021, which used to be now not in drive throughout the restructuring, deliberate to convey environmental problems beneath the purview of the CSE, the central frame for company-level social discussion. This criminal transformation may just counsel a strengthening of the capability of industry unions to take part in defining problems associated with the power transition of their corporations. Alternatively, the legislation does now not envisage “any environmental dimension” for one-off consultations associated with restructuring or PES.
Business unions are due to this fact disadvantaged of the capability to barter the power transition on the native point. This dynamic is a part of a extra common context of the structural weak spot of industry union organizations to steer collective bargaining, which very incessantly advantages employers’ pursuits. Alternatively, union representatives display a need to take part in selections associated with the corporate’s technique, particularly with regards to power transition, which invitations us to take a look at how industry union organizations place themselves in this factor regardless of their susceptible bargaining energy.
Quite a lot of union positions
An elected professional from CFE-CGC TotalEnergies talks in regards to the need to “challenge” the corporate in its decarbonization technique and to inspire it to enforce transition initiatives like Grandpuits extra temporarily. It does so within the framework of the conferences of the Central Social and Financial Committee (CSEC), devoted to the corporate’s technique, during which the union’s position is simplest consultative.
In its communications, the CFE-CGC promotes the technological orientations it has taken or even encourages TotalEnergies to turn into its productive construction extra temporarily on this course, even though it criticizes the wage strategies for enforcing the power transition of Grandpuits. In consequence, it provides a destructive opinion in regards to the reconversion undertaking to CSEC, which, on the other hand, can’t be thought to be as opposition to the undertaking.
This need to be concerned within the commercial orientation of the corporate is manifested on the CGT Grandpuits point via the advance of an alternate conversion undertaking whose specs must be extra ecological than TotalEnergies and with out redundancies. The advance of this choice reconversion undertaking is going down inside the framework of an alliance between the CGT and environmental NGOs, together with Greenpeace and Pals of the Earth.
Delegitimization of inexperienced conversation
Activists of this alliance criticize the non-environmental side of the applied sciences used at the new Grandpuits platform: biofuels emit extra greenhouse gases (GHG) than fossil fuels because of the large building up in deforestation, recycled plastics require the incorporation of oil, and bioplastics depend on an extensive monoculture this is destructive to the surroundings, sugar beet. Complaint of the selections made via TotalEnergies essentially serves to delegitimize the “green” conversation of the multinational corporation in regards to the refinery conversion. This mobilization didn’t make it imaginable to switch the manufacturing orientation of the reconversion undertaking.
CFDT TotalEnergies’ perspectives at the power transition of Grandpuits are somewhat small. Maximum of CFDT’s leaflets and media interventions associated with the reconstruction of the refinery don’t point out the commercial orientation of the undertaking and basically maintain process layoffs, the absence of social discussion on employment, the difficulties of long term skilled conversions, and many others.
Till 2026.
Alternatively, it occurs that throughout the social war of 2021, CFDT TotalEnergies spoke out on environmental problems. When this occurs, the productive course of the reconversion isn’t referred to as into query, however to the contrary is thought of as to be going “in the right direction”. The industry union, on the other hand, has expressed some warning in regards to the corporation’s environmental commitments, as evidenced via this commentary made throughout the CSEC assembly:
“Regarding the environmental aspect, beyond the zero-oil label as well as carbon neutrality by 2050, management must be completely transparent about the (reconversion) project and be in line with this overall goal.”
The invisible democracy of wages
Union attitudes at the commercial orientation of the power transition are plural and variable relying at the group into consideration: they vary from improve to grievance, together with some ambivalence.
Excluding those variations, this analysis displays that some staff and unions are strongly eager about fossil gasoline phase-out problems and wish to take part in commercial decision-making associated with it. Alternatively, the institutional framework of social discussion does now not permit them to steer those selections, which calls into query the democratic nature of the power transition.
(1) E. Bethouk, A. Jobert, A. Surubaru, “Constructing Trade Union Strategies on Company Employment: Between Negotiations and Collective Mobilizations,” in Cecile Guillaume (ed.) CFDT: a sociology of reformist conversion, Presses universitaire de Rennes, 2014.
This text is a part of the record “Energy transition: the great return of industrial policies” produced via Dauphine Eclairages, the net medical media of the Paris Dauphine College – PSL.
