What is at stake for Peugeot in Aulnay goes well beyond the calling into question of the future of thousands of families: it says a lot about French society in all its dimensions. Because everyone bears a share of responsibility in this.
The owners, who preferred, year after year, to get billions of profits in dividends rather than entrust these same sums to corporate management bold enough to invest. Successive company managers, who have failed to anticipate these changes and did not invest on time neither in public transport, neither in hybrid cars, nor in electric cars, and in particular did not invest in models to meet the needs of the French market.
Successive governments, who preferred to subsidize the purchase of models determined by lazy company managements rather than devote the same sums to innovation, to push ahead changes in regulations and encourage consumers to purchase innovative models, to encourage brands to produce them and to bring about normative shifts in society towards a wider use of modern public transport.
The opposition political parties, especially environmentalists, who should have exerted pressure for these changes instead of wasting their time in internal battles. Electricity generators, and first EDF, which hinder the development of the battery needed for electric cars, on the pretext that they will soon be able to make one themselves.
The Commission in Brussels, which has never ceased to oppose, in the name of an outdated doctrine of competition, the concentrations among European car manufacturers, while American, Japanese and Korean automakers are experiencing extreme consolidation.
Consumers who have not, as elsewhere, felt concerned with employment, in their purchases. Unions, which have not pushed for reforms either. Employees, who hold on to outaded jobs rather than learn new skills to use in other firms.
The global financial crisis, of course, which manufactures increasingly each day a major recession.
From all this, we should learn as much as we can.
First, so that this does not happen to Renault, by accelerating the delivery of its electric model, already widely used in other countries but not in France. Without facing the risk of closing its factories for Renault in France and serving the French market from its new ultramodern plant in Tangier.
Then by putting in place labour legislation to ensure that the training of employees to achieve conversion be paid as work, because it is socially useful. This will allow employees to stop being afraid of changes.
Finally, by rethinking the city as soon as possible, to give public transport and environment friendly vehicles a much more important place: you cannot at the same time want to fight against climatic changes and continue to encourage the use of ultra-polluting private cars. In the same way we cannot want to free man from his exploitation and refuse to replace the production lines by robots, which will become increasingly numerous, with 3D printers.
The people of Aulnay should thus be put in a position to consider that moving, without loss of pay, from a sleepy company to another one that is much more dynamic and innovative, as those who are already offering them another job, is good news.
The role of the State in this case is clear: ensure the peaceful conversions of workers, and lead, by law rather than taxes, companies toward innovation.
Nothing less. Nothing more.