PARIS (Reuters) – France’s CGT union, at the core of a weeks-long strike at refineries and some petrol depots of oil major TotalEnergies, walked away from wage talks Thursday night, slashing hopes the standoff, which has sapped petrol stations and strained the country’s nerves, would end.
“We have seen a masquerade… the offers on the table are clearly insufficient”, a CGT representative Alexis Antonioli told journalists after his union left the talks.
A few hours later, the more moderate CFDT and CFE-CGC unions representing a majority of workers found a deal with TotalEnergies which, if approved by union members, would mean a 7% pay rise.
“This doesn’t change anything for the mindset of the striking workers”, said Antonioli when asked if a wage deal without the CGT, similar to the one reached recently at ExxonMobil’s Esso France unit, could slow down the movement.
TotalEnergies on Thursday offered to hold wage talks despite the ongoing strikes, less than a day after President Emmanuel Macron’s government told the group, which has earned bumper profits as energy prices have spiralled higher, to pay its workers more.
(Reporting by Jean Terzian and Tassilo Hummel; Editing by Benoit Van Overstraeten)
