Bargaining for the green transition? The restructuring of the Renault group in France and the role of collective bargaining (2020-2025).

Résumé:

The transition from ICEVs to BEVs entails a great risk for the French automotive industry in terms of job losses and working conditions, both for workers employed by OEMs and for those employed by automotive suppliers in the internal combustion engine value chain. In this context, characterized by social and industrial turmoil, the case of Renault is particularly interesting. Not only it represents a major European generalist vehicle manufacturer, and the second biggest French OEM, but it also went through an important process of restructuring that took place at the same time as the transition to electric mobility production, leading to the creation of subsidiaries dedicated entirely to the manufacture of electric vehicles.
Since Carlos Ghosn’s initial project to become one of the world’s largest manufacturers in terms of volumes (even reaching Toyota’s target of 10 million vehicles), Renault has been at the center of a serious restructuring process that has led to plants closures (such as Renault Choisy-le-Roi in 2023) and deep restructuring (such as Renault Flins in 2020), and mass redundancies in France. These negative results have strongly influenced the new strategy adopted, as of 2020, under the leadership of Renault's new CEO Luca De Meo, to restore the company's competitiveness and maintain a strong industrial presence in France in order to face the challenges of the transition to electric mobility.
Compared to the former, Renault’s new corporate strategy for French factories focuses on value rather than on volume and is aimed at achieving a solid position in the European and North African markets. From an industrial point of view, the company is trying to gain control of vast segments of the value chain and is also diversifying its structure by dividing it into specialized business and productive units. This has led to the decision to locate most of the production activities related to electric mobility in France, from the creation of a gigafactory to the conversion of plants dedicated to powertrain manufacturing and final assembly.
This transformation has not only affected the company’s structure, production strategy and its geographical distribution, but has also led to important changes in the sphere of work and industrial relations. Since 2021, three different major company collective agreements have been negotiated and signed in order to deal with this transition. Trade unions have been playing a crucial but difficult role in this process, as they were asked to accept a series of concessions in terms of employment and working conditions (including increasing flexibility in working hours, among others), while actively engaged in protecting employment levels and workers’ rights.
In this article we study the repercussions of the green transition on work and industrial relations, using the case of Renault's restructuring. We draw on qualitative evidence from interviews with union representatives, managers, engineers and workers at Renault factories, as well as from the analysis of corporate documents, collective agreements and secondary literature between 2020 and 2025. We first describe the restructuring process undertaken by the Renault group following its crisis and the transition to electric mobility. We then proceed to examine the various collective bargaining steps that made this restructuring possible, focusing on the negotiation strategies adopted by the actors and analysing them in the light of the Just Transition framework. Finally, we explore the proposals for a Just Transition put forward by some trade unions, questioning the reasons behind their marginal significance within the dynamics of collective bargaining.