PARIS: Workers at Total’s Gonfreville refinery in France agreed to end a strike, the last of five sites to halt a walkout that began two weeks ago and affected more than half of the country’s refining capacity.
A large majority of striking workers at the 247,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery in Normandy, France’s largest, voted to end the work stoppage, a union official said. “We took note of the end of the movement at La Mede and Feyzin and we decided to stop the strike,” Jacky Pailloux, head of the Sud union at Gonfreville, said.
Striking workers, led by the CGT union, have been locked in a pay dispute with Total, which has refused to reopen talks after other unions approved a deal this month.
“Workers’ demands remain. It’s not an amnesty,” Pailloux said.
A Total spokeswoman had said earlier in the day that workers at the 153,000 bpd La Mede refinery near Marseille had also decided to resume work. Workers at the 109,000 bpd Feyzin refinery near Lyon agree to end their strike on Thursday.
The strike began to crumble on Sunday when workers agreed to return to work at Total’s Donges plant in western France.
Total said the walkouts at the refineries, which produce mainly gasoline and diesel for motorists, had not threatened fuel shortages like those seen during a large-scale refinery strike in 2010.
Total operates five of France’s eight oil refineries. The three plants not run by Total were not affected by the strike.
Reuters
