AFP, Amiens :
Two months before France’s presidential elections, workers for Whirlpool in the northern French city of Amiens are torn between anger and resignation as the US appliances giant prepares to move their jobs to Poland.
The move to Lodz, set for June 2018, will affect some 290 workers and is the latest in a string of manufacturing closures to hit the city famous for its Gothic cathedral.
Caroline Bizet and many of her colleagues at Whirlpool, a domestic appliances brand, could not hide their contempt for politicians in a campaign season marred by corruption scandals.
“All the jobs are being outsourced. People are being laid off, there are suicides, there are divorces, everything,” said Bizet, 49, who has worked for Whirlpool for 17 years.
Her contempt for politicians was clear.
“They’re in their gilded armchairs and they couldn’t care less about us,” she said at the end of her shift at the factory some three kilometres (two miles) from the city centre where clothes dryers are made.
She was referring to the expenses scandals that have embroiled both far-right leader Marine Le Pen and one of her main rivals in the presidential race, conservative Francois Fillon. Picketers distributed leaflets outside the factory, which was bedecked with protest banners.
“When you talk about de-industrialisation of our country it has special resonance here,” said Brigitte Foure, the city’s centrist mayor, voicing her “bitterness” over the exodus to eastern EU states with cheaper labour such as Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
Two months before France’s presidential elections, workers for Whirlpool in the northern French city of Amiens are torn between anger and resignation as the US appliances giant prepares to move their jobs to Poland.
The move to Lodz, set for June 2018, will affect some 290 workers and is the latest in a string of manufacturing closures to hit the city famous for its Gothic cathedral.
Caroline Bizet and many of her colleagues at Whirlpool, a domestic appliances brand, could not hide their contempt for politicians in a campaign season marred by corruption scandals.
“All the jobs are being outsourced. People are being laid off, there are suicides, there are divorces, everything,” said Bizet, 49, who has worked for Whirlpool for 17 years.
Her contempt for politicians was clear.
“They’re in their gilded armchairs and they couldn’t care less about us,” she said at the end of her shift at the factory some three kilometres (two miles) from the city centre where clothes dryers are made.
She was referring to the expenses scandals that have embroiled both far-right leader Marine Le Pen and one of her main rivals in the presidential race, conservative Francois Fillon. Picketers distributed leaflets outside the factory, which was bedecked with protest banners.
“When you talk about de-industrialisation of our country it has special resonance here,” said Brigitte Foure, the city’s centrist mayor, voicing her “bitterness” over the exodus to eastern EU states with cheaper labour such as Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
