Can you tell us how you organised yourselves
at the beginning of your struggle?

Well, at the very beginning, when we heard
the news, I can tell you that it was a terrible
shock to us all. Because it placed us in an
inconceivable and irreversible position. We
were facing the closure of a factory managed
by devious bosses who were only out to make
profit. The workers couldn’t understand a
thing, because they thought that with the last
agreement that they had recently signed on a
40-hour week, that the future of Continental
Clairoix was going to be guaranteed. When
the announcement that the factory was going
to be closed was made, everybody was just
dumbstruck.

The good side is that some of us kept our
minds clear and our heads on our shoulders,
and didn’t give in. We got in touch with a
guy about the struggle that took place in the
1990s in Chaussons in Creil. He supported us
from the outset. He took a look, summed it
all up very quickly, how it had happened, how
it had developed. And he took things in hand
right away.

We developed our strategy that tried to say:
this is what we’ve decided to do now. If you
go along with it in a General Assembly, we
must never give an inch in our demands. This
is what we want, and if you try to cut corners,
if you under-estimate us, you’ll have problems.
If you go along with the idea that we have to
go from A to B to get where we want, then
the bosses are going to have a problem.

It’s tough to get people to face up to reality.
Because getting people to accept that terrible
things were afoot, and that we had to put up
a fight to show the State and the management
what we were capable of doing, in spite of
being so hard-hit. We had to show that we
were capable of getting up off our knees and
fighting. That was the easy part, really. People
were so disgusted. They didn’t want to revenge,
they wanted to fight, straight away.

The second issue was about the arrival of
the advisor who had been with Chausson. He
was close to Lutte Ouvrière, and there were
a lot of people who didn’t like this political
connection, which discredited our movement
to some extent. For the first six weeks
struggle were organised by the CGT, in spite
of the inter-union committee. After all, no one
organisation has the right to be more present
than another. But for six weeks, we weren’t just
fighting the State authorities and the German
management; we were also fighting between
the different unions. When certain unions in
the committee realised, and understood how
important and justified his presence was, as
well as the proposals he had come up with,
that’s when our work started to be more
openly accepted.

But it isn’t a piece of cake, it’s complicated, it’s
been long, and what I’ve been saying doesn’t
hold true for everyone. But all the same,
once you overlook all the hiccoughs, all these
little political problems, we’ve really rolled
our sleeves up and gotten down to the real
struggle. Because even though there were a
one or two guys who had been recuperated
by a sect or by the extreme left, there was
a united front, including the managers. There
were people from the CFDT, FO who had
been behind us since the beginning. They may
have been a bit shy, less involved, with their own
means, their own character. But at a certain
moment there was a united front, stronger,
more united, and everyone got together to
fight for the same cause. And the opposition
started to take us seriously. It took a long time,
but we succeeded.

Fighting the closure

Yes, from a union point of view, we were
against closure from the outset. The problem
with the Germans is that the factory was
already shut in their minds. They told us
straight off that there was no option, there
were four plants that were going to be closed
down, and they wouldn’t give in: this plant
was going to close.

We said...the legal procedures had star ted,
and we couldn’t afford to waste time on
fighting against the closure, because the legal
procedures would have been over, and we
couldn’t negotiate anything. So we took up our
arms... and decided to negotiate and discuss
things. But outside the framework of the legal
proceedings. We weren’t talking about not
closing down any more, we wanted to discuss
things, our demands, not theirs, not in books
3 and 4. We didn’t give a damn about that. It
took us two months to succeed...

There was nothing we could do about the
closure, nothing at all. Had we been in France,
maybe we could have managed something, but
I’m not that sure. As to Germany, given how
far away it was, and it’s another country, we
couldn’t do much. We weren’t supported by
the right-wing policies either, with the rightwing
government that has introduced laws
that favour the bosses making profit. There
was no point wasting any time.... So we fought
to get guarantees, rights and bonuses for our
comrades. They too took up this idea. Now
we have almost reached a final agreement.

What we have succeeded in gaining

We were totally tricked on the 40-hour
agreement that we had signed; it stated
clearly that there was a bright future up to
2012. So our first demand, as we had been
had, was to maintain our contracts up to
the end of 2011, early 2012. This meant that
they had to respect the agreement that they
had signed in 2007. We won this demand to
respect our contracts in one way or another.
There are a few months of part-time work,
and a few months of Continental work paid
by Continental, but we can stay at home.
That means we’ll never again set foot in the
factory.

And of course there are 23 months of paid
time for job-seeking, although the legal time
is 9 months. We managed to talk to the State
authorities about that too. It was tough, and
very contentious. But we overcame the legal
limit of 9 months...The State authorised them
to go beyond the 9 month limit. Continental
are paying for all of that. At the beginning,
they didn’t want to, because the French State
has a 9-month period for being allocated a
new job. Continental management agreed:
ok we’ll pay for the 23 months. It means we
have eight per cent of our net salar y until
2012 and we won’t be unemployed or in a
precarious situation.

Our second demand was severance pay of
50,000 euros free of tax. For everyone. The
advantage of this demand is that there are
people who have been with the company
for three or four years. Had they left without
any severance bonus, they would only have
got 2,400 or 3,000 euros. That’s peanuts. The
advantage of this demand is that even the
youngest guys will be leaving with 50,000
euros. For the old-timers, it’s a bonus too,
because it wasn’t on the cards. And it doubles
their severance pay. But especially for the
young guys, who haven’t been in the company
that long, and signed mortgages when they
were hired, they wouldn’t be able to keep up
the payments otherwise. This bonus is a sort
of substitute salary that’ll keep them ahead of
the game for a while.

The third demand was in terms of age, to
carry the oldest workers. We have succeeded
in stretching the legal measures as far as they
will go... There are 116 guys over 51 and half
years old, who are semi-retired now. The
measures we have won mean that they are
almost totally covered by Continental. These
three majors demands that we had for three
months, since the beginning, have been won
100%.

What now?

Well, we still have one major worry. To get the
State authorities and the German management
to sit down at the negotiating table, we had
to go through a period of disarray and deep
despair because people thought that they State
authorities and the German management had
let them down. The Germans had a negative
effect on the movement by legal action...when
people felt let down by the system, which should
have been there to support them rather than
setting them against each other, when people
were in this state of disarray, when they felt
they could only rely on themselves; the local
authorities (Sous-Préfecture) were almost
totally wiped out. It wasn’t a voluntary thing;
it wasn’t premeditated or planned, except that
at that point, people felt that they had nothing
left to lose. If you are up to your ears in
manure, unemployed, poor, facing job-precarity,
here and now, then dead or not, you don’t
care. You’re a goner, one way or the other.

Facing legal issues

But two things happened. Two hours later, we
heard that the State authorities that we had
been granted an official tripar tite meeting?
With the State authorities and the German
management. The second thing in this affair is
the black spot: seven of our colleagues have
been taken to court for ransacking the Sous-
Préfecture. Our struggle is now to stop the
proceedings against our seven colleagues. They
aren’t criminals, they’re just workers who, for
the most part have spent twenty or thir ty
years working and who felt let down, betrayed
first by Continental who had promised them
a bright future, and a second time by the
State and the legal system that sided with
the employers in their unfair behaviour, who
make their profits in France and close down
factories without protecting the workers, the
people and the citizens.

Is the appeal by the Continental workers to
all other workers victims of lay-offs meeting
a strong echo?

I am sure that this is the case. During our
struggle, we were supported and followed by
people all over France, in different companies
where the workers have been treated abusively,
localised, layed off, companies closed. I hope
that by what we have achieved, even if the
company did finally close down, and if we did
all lose our jobs, that we have managed to get
the guarantees of means that will hopefully
allow us to get through the crisis, maybe to find
new jobs, and get back to work. I hope that all
of this will have inspired others to fight for their
rights. People who thought that everything was
useless, hopeless and that there was nothing
that they could do. Not only did we prove
the opposite, even though we were despairing,
we proved that you could have an impact. No
cause is a foregone lost cause. All struggles
can lead somewhere. At the end of the day, it
all comes down to being convinced, have the
guts and the determination to go through with
things.

Are you planning to continue meeting the
Goodyear and Lear workers?

Yes, of course we are. We shall go on. The
simple fact of not being paid a salary, and not
going to work at the factory every day, having
nothing to do means that we have a few
months ahead of us before the reclassification
leave kicks in. UTI, Lear, Smile, Goodyear and
the others, anyone who needs us can count
on our help. We said it, repeated it again and
again. Anyone who needs us can count on our
support. And we really mean it. Our mates,
our comrades, anyone who is in a bad way
or having trouble with their boss; they can all
count on us. Indeed they can.

For more information:
http://continentalweb.free.fr/