France : an agreement on the transformation of technical engineering and tertiary skills at Renault, which also provides for 2,500 voluntary departures

With more than 50% trade union representation, the signature of the CFE-CGC, CFDT and FO trade unions validates Renault’s agreement on workforce reduction and skills transformation in the automaker’s support and engineering functions. The agreement comes at a particularly challenging time in the automotive industry, and one which has been further exacerbated by the Covid-19 health crisis. In it are provisions both for implementing long-term short-time working arrangements that can be used as "a lever for transforming professions", and for a voluntary redundancy plan targeting 2,500 employees in 2021 (from a total 15,000 concerned). The agreement also includes a training plan aimed at accelerating the transformation process towards electrification, efforts to foster local social dialogue within the business lines, and to sructure a psychosocial risk prevention approach, which is all the more important in a transformation environment.
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In February 2020 and just prior to the Covid-19 crisis, Renault unveiled a €2 billion three-year global cost cutting program. The ensuing health crisis and dealership closures have further exacerbated the group’s difficulties, and seen it rack up losses for the first half of 2020 of more than €7 billion. With French government pressure for progress, the trade unions secured the principle of non-recourse to a generalized redundancy plan and thus workforce reductions will proceed via the voluntar

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