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Alcan Packaging in talks over French capacity reductionsJosh Brooks, 20 January 2009Be the first to comment on this article Alcan Packaging is at loggerheads with French trade unions over plans to reduce production at its Slestat plant in eastern France. Management at the factory, which produces pharmaceutical and food packaging, is reported to have proposed nine days of downtime over a period of nine weeks, starting next month. According to union officials, the plan will affect 350 of the 510 workers at the site. The affected workers, the union said, would receive only 70% of their salaries during the downtime, equating to around €117 per month in lost salary. A spokeswoman for Alcan Packaging Food in France told Packaging News that the planned reduction in capacity was a response to falling demand due to the poor current economic situation. Negotiations with the union and workers were ongoing, she said. Gilles Weber, an official of the CGT union, told newspaper Les Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace that all unions representing workers at the site were opposed to any form of cuts in salary. He said that workers lined up to show their solidarity against the plans at a meeting yesterday (19 January) where they rejected the plans. Last week, he told the paper: “The company is making the workers pay the bill even though it has known the situation for a long time and the company is not losing money. “If management continues with this plan to cut salaries, we will take strong action.” Alcan Packaging’s European Works Council is also understood to be holding an extraordinary meeting today over potential job losses at the company, which was bought by mining giant Rio Tinto 18 months ago but is now up for sale.
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