Good Work !
Words and faces of the P’tis Lu employees of the Ris Orangis Lu biscuit factory.
In collaboration with Zoé VARIER, France Inter.
France, 2004-2005.
It all starts on January 11 2001.The employees of LU, a popular biscuit company, learn from the media that food giant Danone is preparing a restructuration plan for its European biscuit branch. The plan calls for the closing, by 2004, of six factories two of which are situated in France . On March 29 Danone confirms the suppression of 1,850 jobs in Europe in order to guarantee the companys’ profitability.
Some Lu employees categorically reject the validity of the economic motives put forward by Danone to justify the redundancy plan and accuse the group, whose profits for the preceding year attained 1,549 billion euros, of cedeing to the pressure from shareholders. In the public opinion, at a time when the French social model seems to recede at the hands of globalization, the P’tits Lu employees become symbols of downsizing redundancies.
These portraits were taken between 2004 and 2005, in a small room of the union local, at the entrance of the Ris Orangis site.The texts are the words of P’tits Lu employees collected by Zoé Varier, from the national radio France Inter , 2 years after the start of the conflict.