Setting sail for China
The next day, as we watch the 300 ultramodern machines that knit automatically 35 million pairs of brown, black, and white tights each year, it is hard to imagine that all this is going to come to a halt. Last autumn, however, the management decided that they would have their low-end items made in China and keep, at best, only a small “high-end” production unit in France. Why? The market has collapsed – people murmur that women increasingly prefer trousers to dresses – and Well’s competitors, led by DiM, are accused of steamrolling prices. The sole shareholder, Natixis, sees no other solution than to set sail for the Middle Kingdom. “They tell us that it costs them 40% less to produce over there, but transport costs are likely to rise,” Stéphane Charlin warns. “The Chinese will achieve the same quality, we mustn’t fool ourselves about that,” Pierre Debaut, of the CFDT trade union, says resignedly, “But given the distance, Well will have to have larger stocks to be certain to be able to meet the demand, and warehousing costs dear.” “It is true that the French market is ailing,” Stéphane Charlin continues, “but we could have come up with other solutions, too, developed other products, innovated.” For example, some people suggest, investing in medical stockings. “However,” another shop steward adds, “we are dealing with shareholders who are thinking in purely financial terms. They are closed to all suggestions.”

No one seemed to be able to counter this development, neither the population, whose mobilisation was uneven, nor even the unions, who at the end of the day were extremely divided. After several months of struggle, marked by five days of strikes, some of them, including Stéphane Charlin’s CFTC, to which the majority of workers belong, finally threw in the towel, worn out by the standoff. Feeling that demanding the best would jeopardise what good might be saved, they signed a definitive agreement with Management in early February that consisted of a promise to keep minimal activity on the site, which would save some thirty jobs, but also a commitment on the part of the company to pay the equivalent of two years’ wages to the 270 workers who will be dismissed gradually starting in June.
There will be no miracles. The majority of the workers overseeing the production lines and packaging were paid 1,300 euros a month. They will now have to prepare to live on unemployment benefits for a long time. The local employment agency’s lists already show an 18% jobseeker rate in this small town, which had based a large proportion of its economic activity on textiles. “Honestly, what else do you want us to do here? Selling Cevennes onions is not going to earn us a living,” one female worker lamented. “I’ve always worked at the Well factory. We’ve realised that it will soon be gone, and that hurts. How am I going to pay back my loans? I don’t understand why the French government is doing nothing to counter that. It’s shameful, when you consider that the management has just hired forty temporary workers at the factory because we’re having problems keeping up with orders! There’s work for us, but the shareholders want ever more money.”
Several waves of lay-offs already occurred over the past ten years and, according ot the trade unions, only a minority of those workers have managed to find new jobs here and there, for example, as lifecare auxiliaries (Le Vigan has two homes for old age pensioners) or by founding a business. Myriam belongs to the second category. She opened an attractive restaurant in the heart of the town, where she offers a mixture of exotic flavours and local cuisine, with the help of her companion, Sirima, who comes from Burkina Faso. There hasn’t been a slow day since a local television crew gave the restaurant some coverage. “We even had the honour of a visit from the widow of the former president of Burkina Faso, Myriam Sankara,” Myriam says with a smile! “This job has changed my life. The factory work was not at all fulfilling. Still, our business is fragile. We work six days a week. Government taxes are high: Barely 1,300 euros a month, net, remains for the two of us to live on. If Well shuts down completely, I’m very worried, because the company’s employees currently make up a third of my clientele. But we’re not the only ones: There is also the municipal daycare centre. If people have no more money, they will no longer put their kids there.”

The risks of a domino effect
A young couple in their twenties – he is on unemployoment, she is temping at Well – sitting at a table in the restaurant that evening acquiesce. Both of them will regretfully have to leave “their” town to open a seaside restaurant on the Mediterranean. “We are very attached to Le Vigan. It is a magnificent place. But we can’t even imagine investing in a rural inn, for dozens of Brits, Germans, and Dutch people are moving into the area for their retirement. They are pushing prices through the roof. An old house that needs redoing goes easily for 200,000 euros nowadays - way beyond our range!”

Residents are having a hard time keeping up. Many of them complain about this inflation, right down to the supermarket aisles. A soup kitchen run by Les Restos du Coeur was set up in one of the narrow streets in the town’s centre in 2005 – a clear sign that the economy is going downhill. Jean-Marie, who is retired after a career at Well, and Anne-Parie, who is on unemployment, are preparing the commodities collected for the winter. “The situation has worsened compared with last year. Last week we served more than 1800 free meals to 155 families. They included many former Well employes who have not found work and are not getting by.” What to do? Le Vigan’s Socialist mayor, Thierry Bourrié, feels “powerless” to deal with the relocations. He also sees the risks of a domino effect: In his town, two workfare centres that employ people with disabilities do packaging for Well. Even worse, 60% of the municipality’s tax revenue comes from the textile company. “The day they leave, I wonder how I am going to pay my staff. We are working on setting up a wind farm here, which would offset the loss of tax revenue in three years’ time.” But what about jobs? Where will they come from? And when? There are few answers. “We didn’t think about diversifying when the textiles industry was flourishing. I own up to that mistake. I think, however, that there is a future here for tourism and health care. Projects will emerge. We are saved by the fact that we have a subprefecture, high school, hospital, post office, and several administrative headquarters in our town.”

Pulling through
Well’s sole shareholder has undertaken to pay 1.5 million euros to redynamise the employment catchment area. The State will do the same. This does not include aid from the departmental and regional administrations. “That will make it possible – why not? – to support personal projects,” Thierry Bourrié hopes. However, the majority of the factory workers are over 40 years old and have never worked anywhere else (and this is characteristic of the problem in France, where life-long training is still in its infancy). “Going back to school at our age would be very hard,” one employee declares. “It will take ten years before things take off again here, and there will be a lot of social suffering along the way,” is CDFT representative Pierre Defaut’s prognosis. The director of Le Vigan’s Cevennes Museum, Laurent Puech, recognises that what is going on is “obviously tragic”. Yet, with the hindsight of a historian he is certain that the valley will find a way to pull through. “We are living in a period of crisis and transition. Because of this crisis, people here and there talk about the so-called handicaps of our geographical situation. For example, we constantly hear that the town is too cut off from the rest of the world. But when you look at history, you see that this was never an obstacle to its development. And our region is a great deal more open than people think: We have found accounts showing that in the very early 19th century families went as far as the Bosphorus to buy healthy mulberry seeds in order to revive the silkworm industry, which was plagued by disease at the time. We shall definitely rebound!”

Remark: Well’s management did not answer the author’s request for an interview.