At the beginning they didn't want to talk. They were “tired”, they wanted to rest and “take a break, do some housekeeping” both in their house and in their heads. For three weeks they had been giving interviews and fighting night and day in defence of jobs and for a good pay-off. The media spotlight had suddenly focussed on Brittany in the west of France, a socialist bastion that exploded in anger, and where protesters donned the 'red hats' of its rebellious past to fight against the planned new green tax, to burn tyres and to destroy speed cameras. But in the end it changed nothing.
The Gad pig slaughterhouse at Lampaul-Guimiliau in the Finistère, this remote westerly peninsular jutting into the Atlantic Ocean, was closing anyway, leaving its 889 employees out of work. Even before the formal closure on November 28th, the workers were frantically looking for new jobs, competing against other employees made redundant in a swathe of closures that has been hitting the region. “Not this time, Mediapart,” said David Stephan down the phone.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
He was at the couple's home, a little bungalow with its living room, dining room and kitchen laid out in an L-shape and which looks out over fields and cows, and was browsing the “Let's save Gad” page on Facebook. His wife Stéphanie was nearby, watching television, her voice audible in the background. She was against speaking to the press again. “She doesn't like the media, they make everything simplistic, they only talk about the destruction and the fascist 'red hats',” explains David.
But torn between a desire to describe the “general discontent” that is mounting in Brittany, to give a voice to the former workers at Gad who have already been forgotten after lighting the first fuse of the “Breton bomb”, and a wish to withdraw into their own personal world, David nonetheless agrees to a meeting at the village's bar and tobacconist the following day. Even so, he does not guarantee he will show up. “If we're there it's because Madame agrees and because Nono [the nickname of the former Gad workers' spokesperson Olivier Lebras] vouches for you,” he warns.
In the end the couple do show up at the Falco bar, accompanied by their dog. David is dressed in jeans and a football top emblazoned with the logos of one of his passions, PSG football club in Paris. Stéphanie is wearing a pink top over a pastel green shirt. He is immediately at ease and chatty, even managing to adapt the singer Michel Polnareff's famous line 'We'll all go to paradise, even me' to “We'll all go to the job centre, you and me...” It is, he explains, in his nature “to make jokes, to laugh even more in the face of adversity”.
She, however, is initially very distant. For a long time Stéphanie's gaze is turned away, her blue eyes misted over, half-hidden by her blonde hair, as if she is suffering from vertigo as she faces the abrupt reality of the new world that awaits her. Then, as the conversation carries on, she gains confidence and starts to let go a little, giving a snapshot of her life as a worker who, at the age of 45, is alarmed at the prospect of having to queue up at the job centre for the first time in her life.
As it is raining, the interview takes place inside until it's time for David and Stéphanie to go and fetch their daughter Romane, who will soon be 18, from the nearby town of Landivisiau, where she is currently on work experience in a primary school. Their only child, Romane usually boards at a technical college in Brest – “which costs us 150 euros a month with no state help” - and is hoping to be a care assistant. The location of the interview is divided between the bar, where some former Gad staff come to nurse their sorrows over an early morning glass of red wine, the village's only restaurant, where the waitress's father also worked at Gad, and finally the couple's own home. Stéphanie and David had this house built in 2010 for 150,000 euros, taking out a 17-year mortgage with monthly payments of 700 euros.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
Inside are photos of their wedding day. It was May 1st 1999, well before they became colleagues at Gad, a family business empire with a foothold in the commune, about whom they were repeatedly told that “just like civil servants” anyone with a permanent job at Gad would be “there until they retire”. David himself is originally from Brest - “like the [social economy] minister Benoît Hamon who we haven't seen or heard from on the Breton crisis” - and met Stéphanie, who's from Landivisiau, because she was the best friend of his best friend’s wife. They hit it off at a birthday party, discovering they had lots in common; fathers in manual work, mothers who did cleaning for a living. Their plan was to live and work in the area, anchored in the countryside which is just 15 minutes away from the ocean by car.
'If someone suggests working at the abattoir, say no, it's a crap job'
For some years they had job security, each of them earning the equivalent of the minimum wage, and living “well and simply” in Landivisiau. David worked as a forklift truck operator at a central depot for the supermarket chain Carrefour at Dirinon, while Stéphanie worked at an hotel and restaurant in Landivisiau. But once their daughter was born, Stéphanie's hours were no longer compatible with family life and she resigned. Instead she got temporary work at the Gad slaughterhouse. She was warned against it. “If someone suggests working at the abattoir, say no, it's a crap job, your health will suffer,” she was told. But in the end Stéphanie started work there because, as she explains, “apart from the food industry, putting ham, chicken and salmon in containers, there's nothing”.
Enlargement : Illustration 3
She was thirty at the time. On her first day she regretted her decision. Stéphanie was sent to work in the gutting section, which always happened to “newbies”. She explains: “It's the worst and dirtiest place in the abattoir, where you wash and clean the pigs' guts, intestines, offal, livers.” It was also one of the biggest sections at the plant with forty women and sixty men working there. Faced with the “unbearable” smell her whole body initially seized up.
She was thirty at the time. On her first day she regretted her decision. Stéphanie was sent to work in the gutting section, which always happened to “newbies”. She explains: “It's the worst and dirtiest place in the abattoir, where you wash and clean the pigs' guts, intestines, offal, livers.” It is also one of the biggest sections at the plant with forty women and sixty men working there. Faced with the “unbearable” smell her whole body initially seized up.
You can see the look of disgust on her face as she recalls that day. Her new colleagues showed her the way to the toilets so she could “throw up”. They reassured her: “It happened to all of us.” She fought it and started to control her breathing. A few hours later and she was even able to manage a smile. “It was the department with the best workplace atmosphere, there was no one trying to boss you around. We laughed all the time to make the work more bearable.” She never asked to be moved.
Stéphanie had no idea then that, over the course of her time at Gad, she would require operations on the carpal tunnels of each wrist because of the repetitive nature of her work, and that she would never eat offal again. Nor did she know that one day the business would start to struggle. At the start of the 2000s the factory was slaughtering an average of 6,400 pigs a day, compared with the 3,000 a day it was killing by 2013.
The financial crisis had not yet arrived, nor had the phenomenon of 'social dumping' by German agri-food industry firms – the use of 'low-cost' labour from Eastern Europe to drive down costs which helps make French produce uncompetitive – started to bite. It is this 'social dumping' that has undermined the French pork industry and helped turned Brittany, which is regarded as one of the most pro-European regions in France, against all things German.
Enlargement : Illustration 4
Also, when Stéphanie joined Gad the Brittany-based agri-food giant Cecab had not become a stakeholder in the firm, a stake that would turn into a majority shareholding and inexorably lead to the unravelling of Gad's future, its production, its workers' social rights and profit-taking bonuses. At the time, jobless people in the area were still being told: “Don't worry, you can always go and work at Gad”. The company was described as “the local rock which means that the bank will give you a loan with no questions asked”.
David joined Gad in 2007, having been made redundant by Carrefour after 17 years of loyal service. He joined the refrigeration department “where all the produce that is not sent fresh ends up”. Like many, he started off working on a temporary basis. After two months he signed a permanent contract; he was one of the few staff who had a license to drive a forklift truck.
David took home 1,400 euros net a month, Stéphanie 1,500 euros. The couple woke at 3.30am, started work at 5am and finished their day at 1pm. After moving to their new home at Lampaul-Guimiliau, in an area of the village where all the houses look the same, the couple were able to walk to work in 15 minutes, saving money on fuel.
“That's all over,” says David now. “We'll have to buy a second car for Madame. We're starting from scratch, like a kid finishing primary school and starting at secondary school who gets lost in the corridors when confronted with 15 different classrooms.” On the day that Mediapart meet the couple – in mid-November - they have just begun to “get” what is happening to them. They have been laid off work since the start of the month following an agreement to end the workers' protests. “It's a bit like being on holiday but it mustn't carry on like this,” says Stéphanie.
Enlargement : Illustration 5
Her immediate target is to find work before Christmas. “It doesn’t matter what, I'll take anything, I have to work,” she says. By the time Mediapart meets her she had already sent off 15 CVs and covering letters, to retirement homes, the hospital and laundry firms within a 30-kilometre radius of her home. Stéphanie says she “has a chance” with the local council who have been looking for people to help carry out the census.
David, meanwhile has “re-written everything”. He knows, he says, that “a good covering letter must be short and grab the reader's attention”. He also knows “how to conduct himself during an interview faced with a potential employer”. David says he is “worried” for his wife, less so for himself. “As a forklift truck operator I'll always find something but for women in the area there's little opportunity, apart from the agri-food industry. And then again, at Gad, the problem is one of qualifications. Most have no or very few qualifications. For example, Stéphanie hasn't the qualifications for work that involves IT or to be a secretary,” he says.
On the advice of an official at the job centre, the couple are also going to use their contacts. They are very involved in local groups, including the events committee at Landivisiau, and “know a few people”. They also reassure themselves about their past work record. “Faced with a CV from someone who was at Gad, even the least hard-working, employers are bound to be interested. When you've worked at an abattoir, you can work anywhere, work doesn't scare us, we're used to getting up at 3.30 in the morning,” they say. The couple also think about the prospect of the job centre at nearby Morlaix and its tiny branch office at Landivisiau being “invaded” by “a thousand” former Gad workers. “They mustn't arrange our appointments on the same day, there'd be a fight,” says David, half-joking.
'France is split into three: the poor, the down-trodden workers and the rich'
Among the decisions the couple have to make, and quickly, is which form of unemployment status they should choose. One option is to sign a contrat de sécurisation professionnelle (CSP), a status which is in theory designed to help redundant workers get back more quickly into permanent work, thanks to more attentive monitoring. The other is the more usual form of unemployment called the allocation d'aide au retour à l'emploi or ARE.
Enlargement : Illustration 6
The main trade union at Gad, Force Ouvrière (FO), has been recommending the CSP unemployment contract, especially for those hopeful of getting a job soon. This is because it pays more in the shorter term: those on CSP get 97% of their last net salary for a year while the ARE system pays 57.4%. However, David says he find the CSP contract “bizarre and restrictive for those who want to work”. He says: “The CSP blocks you, you have to leave it if you find a new job whether it's for two days or six months!” He says it actively discourages people from taking on temporary jobs. “Yet with this crisis, temporary positions are the way in, that's all there is, all employers say so.”
He believes that the main purpose of the CSP is to massage the unemployment figures. “Look at [the former employees at] Doux [editor’s note, the Breton poultry group that went into administration in June 2012], 1,000 workers laid off a year and a half ago, most of them signed up for CSP and barely 80 of them have found a job,” says David.
Stéphanie nods her head in agreement. Her husband is her “strength” and “compass”. Without him, she says, she would fall into “doom and gloom”. In her family, the closure of Gad has been a “massacre”. Her mother is very worried; three of her five children have been made jobless at the same time. In addition to Stéphanie her 49-year-old sister and her 54-year-old brother had each worked at Gad for more than ten years.
David goes off to buy cigarettes and comes back with the local newspaper. On the front page is a story about the workers at the Tilly-Sabco poultry abattoir at Guerlesquin, forty minutes away, who also face an uncertain future. Having donned red hats the workers had attacked the railings of the offices of the sub-prefect – the official representative of the state – and written graffiti on the walls. “The state has to watch out and show some support, the Breton people will never let go,” says David, who remembers the battle between 1978 and 1981 against plans for a nuclear power station at Plogoff in Brittany, a plant that was never built largely thanks to the strength of local opposition. He and his wife say they are both against “violence” and “destruction” but add that “in this country, to get yourself heard, you have to break things, to scrap with the CRS [editor's note, riot police]”.
But the couple also say that while they feel “solidarity” with the people who have attacked the new roadside structures designed to help collect the planned green tax and are “proud” to be at the origin of a rebellion that has spread to other parts of the country, and while they are sympathetic to the FO union without being members, they have not yet donned the revolt’s iconic red hats. And nor have they taken part in any of the region's mass demonstrations. They think that the protest movement has been hijacked by all kinds of groups, particularly by “fascists and separatists”, and that the message has become confused.
“At the beginning it was clear, it was the battle for jobs, to be able to live and work in the area, and against the eco-tax, the symbol of the tax whammy, and against taxes, rising VAT, against the cost of living,” they say. “It was not to burn speed cameras.” David and Stéphanie also find it hard to accept seeing bosses marching side by side with hard-pressed workers in the protests.
Enlargement : Illustration 7
However, while they may be uneasy about the nature of the Breton protests they are certain of who they will now vote for and are not afraid to say so: the far-right Front national. Even though, paradoxically, the pair accuse the FN of having sabotaged the Breton protests, they say they will vote for Marine Le Pen's party out of anger and despair, to “make themselves heard”. Many of the former workers at Gad, they suggest, are inclined to do the same. One reason is that the FN's protectionist and anti-European rhetoric strikes a chord with them. “Far more so than [radical left Parti de gauche leader Jean-Luc] Mélenchon who insulted us and called us slaves and idiots. He's not interested in setting foot in Finistère. He's lost his electorate in Brittany,” says David, who denies being either a “racist” or a “fascist”.
For Stéphanie, whose communist father revered former French Communist Party boss Georges Marchais, it will be the first time she has voted since becoming 18. The day after the announcement that the factory was to close she went straight to the mayor's office to put her name on the electoral registration list in time for the local elections in March and the European elections in May. She did so because she was “sickened by the way in which [principal shareholders in Gad] Cecab treated [us], by the state that does nothing, by François Hollande and his Breton ministers [editor’s note, for example defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and social economy minister Benoît Hamon] who have let us down”.
Stéphanie also feels a sense of “injustice” over the violent confrontation that took place in October between workers from the Gad abattoir at Lampaul-Guimiliau which has closed and those at the Gad slaughterhouse at Josselin in the neighbouring Breton département of Morbihan which has been saved. The redundant workers believe the confrontation was orchestrated by management, and say that around 100 temporary Romanian staff are working at the reprieved Josselin factory.
“Until that point she belonged to France's biggest party, the abstainers, and we never spoke about politics at the dinner table,” says David. He has himself tried “the Left, the Right, they're all the same, they just string us along, so why not Marine Le Pen? She doesn't frighten you like her father [former FN president Jean-Marie Le Pen] did. David says that he voted against the EU Maastricht Treaty in France's vote on it in 1992 and is sorry that Nicolas Sarkozy, whom he voted for in 2007 and 2012, is not still in power. “It would have been better to keep [Sarkozy] as Hollande is carrying out the same policies as him,” he says.
David is angry about the fact, as he sees it, that people who work hard get treated less well compared with those who don't work. He says he knows people who “haven't worked for 15 years who get everything, state allowances, food parcels, free electricity and presents at Christmas”. Yet when he tried to get state help to pay for his daughter to board at her school, he was told to go and ask his boss for a pay rise.
“France is divided into three groups: the poor who get all the benefits; hard-pressed workers; and the happy rich,” says Dabid. Stéphanie, who manages the family budget to the nearest centime, notes that life was tough even before they lost their jobs. “Each month we pay the equivalent of a minimum wage in compulsory state charges [editor's note, for health, pension and social security entitlement]. And this year we also paid 900 euros in [income] tax [editor's note, in France income tax is relatively low compared with the mandatory social charges], which is an increase of 200 euros,” she says.
Recently David went to see their local socialist MP Chantal Guittet about the couple's redundancy pay-offs, which are among the lowest that have been agreed in the area. “My wife will get 15,000 euros for having worked there 15 years, whereas when I was made redundant back in 2006 I received 30,000 euros for the same period,” David points out. He wanted to ask the MP if the payments would be exonerated from tax or not. The MP wasn't able to respond.
The couple would have placed their lump sum pay-offs in an investment structure known as assurance-vie, which is popular with many French people. However, since they learnt that the government wanted to increase taxation on this form of saving – even if the government has largely backtracked on such plans – they have changed their mind. “We'll put them somewhere else,” say the couple. “There's no way that the state can grow fat on the money that comes from our misfortune.”
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English version by Michael Streeter