Making themselves heard: why sacked workers David and Stéphanie will vote for the far-right Front national

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When abattoir employees David and Stéphanie watched TV reports of workers in bitter disputes with bosses over factory closures, they insisted it could never happen to them. Their abattoir in Brittany was reputed to provide 'jobs for life'. But then last October the news struck that the plant was to close, leaving David, Stéphanie and more than 800 other workers out of a job. Here the couple tell Mediapart's Rachida El Azzouzi about their shock at being thrown out of work, their anger at the government in Paris and explain why for the first time they intend to vote for Marine Le Pen's far-right party.

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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.

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