Stellantis reaches deal with unions on moving jobs to new French battery “gigafactory”

PARIS (Reuters) -Carmaker Stellantis said it has reached a deal with a majority of labour union representatives about moving jobs from a gasoline and diesel engine plant in Douvrin, northern France, to a “gigafactory”, producing batteries for the e-mobility era.

Union sources earlier told Reuters that the CFTC, Force Ouvrière and CFE-CGC unions – which represent a majority of staff – were set to sign a deal moving workers from the plant founded in 1969 over to a yet-to-be-built battery plant nearby.

Although their opposition does not hinder the agreement from going through, the biggest CGT staff union as well as the CFDT union said they would not sign the deal, as they consider the commitment to transfer 400 jobs to the new battery factory as insufficient. The French-Italian carmaker’s battery “gigafactory” – a joint project with TotalEnergies and Mercedes-Benz and the first of its kind in France – is expected to open in the second half of 2023.

(Reporting by Giles Guillaume;Writing by Tassilo Hummel;Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and David Evans)