Emmanuel Macron met former Whirlpool employees in Amiens – archyde

It was one of the highlights of the campaign between the two presidential rounds in 2017, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen went to Amiens the same day to meet Whirlpool employees promising them to save their jobs. More than four years later, the employees experienced a plant closure in June 2018 and two buyers, who each time failed to relaunch the activity.

While traveling to Amiens, the President of the Republic returned to the episodes of the takeover of the Whirlpool factory, including the closure of the site, by meeting nine former employees, Monday, November 22, in a cafe in the city center.

“It shows that unfortunately goodwill is not enough. We have sometimes been taken for fools. We have sometimes been fooled collectively ”, he admitted, alluding to the succession of bankruptcies of the buyers of this industrial site, where he has visited several times since 2017, ensuring each time that the site could restart. After having closed its doors in 2018 following the relocation of its production of tumble dryers to Poland, the company WN had taken over 162 employees of the plant (out of 278) before being placed in liquidation in July 2019 for misconduct. business opportunities. A second buyer, Ageco, then suffered the same fate.

“It’s economic and industrial life, we had adventures that disappointed everyone. There are failures in the covers ”, he justified in front of the press. But he admitted that the first buyer, WN, whom he had come to welcome as a savior in 2017, “Behaved like a bounty hunter” and “Will be judged”.

“We have been lied to so much”

“The last year has been so difficult, we have been lied to so much, declared to the Head of State, a former employee, reconverted in the real estate. I find it hard to talk about it, it was terrible. “For four years, we have not given up for them”, added a former trade unionist. “Each time we believe in it, we invest ourselves and it stops”, testifies another.

” I understand very well. I got screwed with you. It is not your failure. It is their failure. You are the victims of the errors that have taken place and that you have had to endure ”, replied the president, promising to continue to help with individual solutions.

This Monday morning meeting, with nine Whirlpool alumni, including four former trade unionists, was unveiled on Twitter by François Ruffin, the deputy La France insoumise (LFI) of the Somme. “We had to insist very hard” for this meeting, said the deputy on France Bleu Picardie. “There is an enormous weariness when you undergo three layoffs plans, when there are buyers three times and you are told three times: ‘This is the right one’ and you are made redundant again: you finish. to pieces after an experience like this ”Mr. Ruffin added.

“Of the 278 initial employees, only 43 people remain to date for whom a solution must be found”, specified the group’s human resources department. One hundred and ninety-one have benefited from employment or training (124 permanent contracts, 41 fixed-term contracts, 20 business start-ups, 6 people in training) and 41 have retired or taken early retirement.

In 2019, Mr. Macron had already met the former employees of Whirlpool in Amiens by trying to defend its balance sheet a few months after the judicial liquidation of WN. “I told Whirlpool the truth. (…) Did I say: we’re going to save you all, we’re going to keep the business? No. I said: those who tell you that are lying to you “, then declared the head of state.