The electric company EDF will hire, but by making “arbitrations”, said Wednesday a spokesman, by lifting the moratorium announced only a few days earlier.
“This moratorium has allowed us to get feedback from the various departments in order to be able to make decisions,” said a spokesperson for the group, without revealing the extent of the figures or the jobs concerned. “The process (of freezing hiring) was intended to take stock of the situation in order to make trade-offs and establish priorities,” he added, stating that these trade-offs will be made “in the coming days.
This “moratorium” had been decided internally by the human resources department and the process was not initially intended to filter through to the media. When questioned, EDF had nevertheless confirmed that it was suspending its recruitments while it identified its priorities at a time when the company was going through “a difficult situation”, this spokesman had explained on 13 April.
The company, which is in the process of being fully nationalized, is facing many industrial and financial challenges that require more hiring rather than less. EDF must both recover the production of the existing nuclear fleet, extend its life as much as possible and prepare the construction of at least six reactors, according to the priorities set by the government. This will require a lot of manpower while France has not built any power plants for 21 years.
On Friday, Gifen (the French nuclear energy industrial grouping) is due to submit its report on the industry’s skills needs to the government to launch what is being presented as the biggest nuclear project since the Messmer Plan in 1974. It is estimated that the industry will need to recruit up to 10,000 people per year over the decade.
The electrician ended the year 2022 with a record loss of 17.9 billion euros, attributing part of its woes to the Arenh mechanism (regulated access to historical nuclear electricity) and its production difficulties in nuclear power due to corrosion problems.
