Trucks of fuel left the TotalEnergies depot of Mardyck, near Dunkirk (North), shortly after 4:00 pm on Thursday, the first ones for more than two weeks, after a requisition order forcing employees on strike to come to work, a journalist of the AFP noted.
The Flanders depot, which supplies nearly half of the Hauts-de-France region, has not delivered fuel since September 26, causing major supply problems in the region since early October.
The prefecture of Hauts-de-France estimates that at least half of the service stations are unavailable.
After the Esso-ExxonMobil site in Normandy on Wednesday, the government decided to requisition this TotalEnergies depot on Thursday. The prefect of the North has issued an order requiring a team of six employees to go to work, which runs until Friday 6:00 am. Another one could be enacted in the
stride.
Two hours after the arrival Thursday of the first team of requisitioned employees, trucks left the depot and took the road without hindrance, in the presence of two vans of CRS, noted a journalist of
AFP, while strikers remained gathered on a picket line about 800 meters away.
A general meeting is scheduled for 6:00 am on Friday, at the change of shift, to decide on the continuation of the movement, at the end of negotiations scheduled for Thursday from 8:00 pm between the management of TotalEnergies and the unions, said to AFP Clément Mortier, general secretary FO.
In its order, the prefecture emphasizes that the strike has led to queues of up to 2 km, creating dangers for road traffic and friction between motorists, and that “over time, the shortage weakens the vulnerable”.The prefecture argues that these requisitions, “very targeted”, can ensure both “social dialogue and responsibility.
Usually, about 100 trucks carrying an average of 30,000 liters of fuel leave the TotalEnergies site in Mardyck every day.
At the TotalEnergies site in Donges (Loire-Atlantique), also on strike for wages, CGT secretary Fabien Privé Saint-Lanne denounced “the sending of gendarmes to requisition strikers at the Flandres site. “The CGT has noted that today in France, it is no longer the President of the Republic who commands, it is Patrick Pouyanné”, the CEO of TotalEnergies, ironized the trade unionist of Donges where, according to him, “no drop of fuel” leaves the installations “neither by pipe, nor by car, nor by truck, nor by boat”.
If the strike is prolonged on Friday at midday on the site of Donges, “there will be the question of the complete stop of the installations, therefore of a movement which would harden” and “problems of shortage (which) will not get any better”, estimated Mr. Privé Saint-Lanne.
