The secretary general of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), Sophie Binet, and Fabien Roussel (French Communist Party, PCF) denounced, Wednesday, May 17, violence in the ongoing social conflict in the Vertbaudet childcare brand in Marquette -lez-Lille (North), where the police evacuated a picket on Tuesday. The Lille prosecutor’s office announced in the afternoon the opening of an investigation into the alleged attack on a CGT delegate. “Investigations are underway, including the requisitioning of video surveillance images,” the prosecution was told.
“Not only does the boss refuse to negotiate, but in addition the prefect, instead of organizing mediation, has just sent them the CRS to dismantle the picket line, and we have a striker who ended up in the emergency room and several guards at view, ”lamented Sophie Binet on France Inter. The evacuation took place on Tuesday morning. The CRS have dislodged the strikers mobilized since March 20 at the call of the CGT for wage increases. According to management, 72 out of 327 employees are still on strike.
Received at the end of the afternoon by Elisabeth Borne, the union official assured that the Prime Minister had made a commitment to her to “stop all proceedings against the workers” and “to guarantee mediation with the management of the company”.
“Heavily Gassed, Beaten”
The local CGT union said in a statement that one of the site’s two CGT delegates had been “copiously gassed, beaten” on Tuesday evening by people posing as “plainclothes police” who came to question him outside his home. to the cry of “dirty striker”. The departmental directorate of public security in the North declined to comment.
The deputy of the North and boss of the PCF, Fabien Roussel, had announced to Agence France-Presse (AFP) that he had seized the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, of this “extremely serious” aggression, and wished that the prosecution seized of it, regardless of the filing of a complaint by the “traumatized” delegate. About forty striking employees also relocated to the site on Wednesday, supervised by the police, one of them, Anaïs Vanneuville, told AFP. “We are continuing our strike and remain mobilized on the site,” she said.
According to the CGT, the police had already intervened on Monday. They had arrested two activists from outside the company and placed them in police custody, information not confirmed by the Lille prosecutor’s office. According to their lawyer, Ioannis Kappopoulos, they would have been released, without immediate action. In this company, “there is no salary above 1,500 euros. The girls who work on the assembly line to make packages do 22 kilometers a day on their feet, ”denounced Mr. Roussel on CNews in the morning, also calling for mediation.
He spoke of a climate of sexist violence and insults, inviting strikers to “file a complaint”. “You can die outside,” he said, members of management commonly say as they pass the picket line. Because they are women, one of them ventured to say, “There have never been so many condoms out there.” »
The “rebellious” deputy of the Somme, François Ruffin, for his part reaffirmed on Wednesday his support for the striking employees in a press release. “They demand respect. They are answered with brutality,” he lamented.
