The energy company EDF has decided on a “moratorium” on hiring for 2023 because of “its difficult financial situation” after record losses in 2022, a company spokesman told AFP on Thursday.
EDF has decided to suspend its recruitments for the time being to “take stock of its staffing needs”, in order to better target its priorities, at a time when the company is going through “a difficult situation”, explained this spokesperson, confirming information from the newspaper Les Echos. “So there is a moratorium on hiring for 2023,” although “the idea is not to suspend” hiring “all year,” the same source said.
The announcement was made recently internally in a work email from the Human Resources Director to his teams. The number of planned hirings has not been made public by EDF, which has also announced the arrival on Monday of a new Director of Human Resources, Caroline Chavanas, in anticipation of the replacement of the current director, Christophe Carval, on retirement in the coming months.
Ms. Chavanas is a defector from the military manufacturer Naval Group, after a career that saw her start in China and work in IT companies and then at Thales. This suspension of recruitment comes at a crucial time for EDF. The company, which is in the process of being completely nationalized, is facing many industrial and financial challenges, which would involve hiring rather than the opposite. EDF must both recover the production of the existing nuclear fleet and prepare the construction of at least six reactors, two major priorities stated by the government.
Contacted by AFP, the Ministry of Economy and Finance did not wish to react. The electric company 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).
This mechanism, which EDF is asking to be abandoned, against the advice of the government, obliges it to resell its electricity to its competitor suppliers, leading to “an underpayment of the company”, according to its CEO Luc Rémont. “Freezing hiring in light of the industrial challenges facing EDF makes no sense,” said Amélie Henri, EDF’s national CFE-Energie secretary.
In terms of human resources, EDF is also experiencing turbulence linked to the pension reform, against which many employees have been mobilizing since January. The reform, if enacted, will modify the contract of new hires from September onwards, by abolishing the special pension scheme for the electricity and gas industries.
