Renault to cut jobs but denies plans to close factory
• Chair assures protesters the plant in northern France will not be shut
Renault chair JeanDominique Senard sought to defuse a crisis over the Maubeuge factory in northern France where workers have started strikes and protests over the carmaker’s cost-cutting programme, saying he was not planning to shut the site.
“I have no intention, a priori, to close the Maubeuge plant,” he said in an interview on Sunday on RTL-Le Figaro-LCI’s Le Grand Jury. “I can assure you, I never said that and I didn’t even think that.”
The manufacturer, which is poised to get a state-guaranteed loan for as much as €5bn, has come under government pressure to tread carefully with plans to downsize in France.
Finance minister Bruno Le Maire, speaking in a separate interview, said the plant “is not going to disappear”.
Renault unveiled a sweeping plan on Friday to eliminate about 14,600 jobs worldwide and lower production capacity by almost a fifth in a bid to reduce costs amid the global auto industry slump. The plan includes trimming 4,600 positions in France, or about 10% of the firm’s total in its home country, through voluntary retirement and retraining, and sparked an outcry from unions.
Talks with unions and local politicians on the future of
Renault’s northern sites are set to get under way on Tuesday. While promising no workers will be left behind, Senard said the carmaker remains “fragile” and that its problems of significant overcapacity go well beyond the French plants.
Meanwhile, AFP reported that thousands of workers rallied on Saturday outside the Renault factory in northern France to protest the firm’s decision to cut 15,000 jobs worldwide, including 4,600 in France.
Unions said 8,000 people took part in the protest at the Maubeuge subsidiary over the cuts designed to help Renault steer out of a cash crunch worsened by the coronavirus pandemic. The plant, which employs about 2,100 people, has been stopped since Friday.
Under the new plan, Maubeuge-based production of electric Kangoo utility vehicles is set to move to Douai, 70km away, much to the consternation of workers. “It’s an earthquake that is taking place. We want to keep our company here,” Jerome Delvaux, a union member, told AFP.
“This demonstration today is very important, even if it is a first step, to show the government and Renault that workers and residents of this area are committed to this company and that we have support,” he said.
The company will target savings of more than €2bn over three years and turn its focus to electric vehicles as it seeks to restore competitiveness in a market reeling from slumping sales since the Covid-19 pandemic forced millions of people into home confinement for weeks.
Renault had been navigating turbulent waters even before the health crisis, starting with the shock arrest of its former boss Carlos Ghosn on financial misconduct charges in 2018, which led to deep rifts in its alliance with Japanese partners Nissan and Mitsubishi.
In February, the company unveiled its first annual loss in a decade, followed quickly by the 2020 health crisis that saw new car registrations in the EU plunge 76.3% year on year in April.
In an “adjustment” plan announced to unions on Thursday, Renault said nearly 4,600 jobs would be cut out of 48,000 in France, and more than 10,000 in the rest of the world — about 8% of the company’s global workforce. It would entail retraining, internal mobility and voluntary departures, spread out over three years, with no outright dismissals envisioned for now.
Four production sites in France could be closed or restructured, the automaker said, and its hulking factory at Flins northwest of Paris will stop making the Zoe electric hatchback from 2024. /Bloomberg/AFP