Several nuclear power plants were still faced with strike moves for the revaluation of wages on Wednesday, October 12 that could cause work delays ahead of the restart of certain reactors – a move that the Gravelines plant, the most powerful in France, will do. on Thursday Western Europe.
In Gravelines, in the north, workers, who are on strike at the call of the FO and the CGT to demand a 5% increase in their gross wages, are threatening to delay the connection to the network of one of the six 900 MW reactors . shut down this weekend for annual maintenance and will be restarted before the end of the year.
According to the FO secretary of the socio-economic commission, Franck Redondo, a delay in the connection would not affect individuals, but it would “cuts” At the companies.
“Strikes can affect some maintenance work”EDF said, without being able to immediately assess whether the timetable for bringing these facilities back to the network would be affected by these moves. If necessary, EDF should communicate this.
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Other power plants have been experiencing strike movements for several weeks, at the request of the unions, also to get wage increases and take inflation into account.
The power plants Tricastin (Drôme), Cruas (Ardèche), Bugey (Ain), Cattenom (Moselle) are particularly affected by these strikes, which for some delay tests before they go after scheduled maintenance work or work to solve corrosion problems, while France approaching winter is going through a very tense situation, with a large part of the nuclear fleet unavailable.
At the industry level, after months of arms wrestling, electricity and gas industry employers and unions reached an agreement on October 6, subject to signature until Monday, that notably provides for a 3.6% increase in the national base salary from 2022 and 2023, including 2.3% for 2023.
advances “remarkable but far from reaching the claims”especially that of the FNME-CGT, declared its federal secretary, Fabrice Coudour. “Because it’s an industry agreement, there will be business negotiations behind it”he added, specifying the purpose of these strike movements.
In particular, the CGT asked for inflation to catch up, recalling, in Mr Coudour’s voice, that it was around 6% in August. There is “No trend emerging at the moment” the consultation of the base by the CGT trade unions of the electricity and gas industry, to know whether this agreement will be ratified by the union, concluded Mr. Coudour.