PARIS, April 17 (Reuters) – TotalEnergies service station attendants in France went on strike on Friday to protest against rising fuel costs, demanding the \u200coil giant, which owns a quarter of the country’s service stations, \u200craise salaries.<\/p>\n
The company said last month it would cap prices at pumps in mainland France to \u200bhelp customers after the Iran war pushed oil prices to their highest levels in years.<\/p>\n
“Total’s employees are receiving no support to cope with this surge in fuel prices, and this needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency,” Sophie Binet, \u200csecretary general of the \u2060CGT trade union, told France 2 television on Friday.<\/p>\n
Binet also reiterated a call for the government to increase minimum wages.<\/p>\n
TotalEnergies did \u2060not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the union, which represents workers in almost 200 TotalEnergies service stations across France, asked for relief from petrol \u200bcosts \u200bfor its workers and an increase in \u200btheir salaries. It did not state \u200cthe level of the requested salary increase.<\/p>\n
The strike coincides with a heavy travel period in France with many families on the road as schools let out for spring holidays in parts of the country, including the region around Paris.<\/p>\n
Monthly minimum wages in France are set at around 1,800 euros ($2,121) gross and 1,450 \u200ceuros net.<\/p>\n
“With an average wage of around 1,600 \u200beuros, we can’t even afford to come to \u200bwork anymore,” the workers’ statement \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n
The French government said on Tuesday it is considering a \u200ccap on fuel distributors’ margins, meeting \u200bresistance from the distribution \u200bindustry.<\/p>\n
“We are striking to be able to fill up and go to work,” workers at the Southern Poitou-Charentes service station in western France wrote \u200bon a sign the \u200cCGT posted on its Facebook account.<\/p>\n
“We want to work but not \u200bat a loss,” another sign said.<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.8488 euros)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Alessandro Parodi \u200band Makini Brice; Editing by Joe Bavier)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS, April 17 (Reuters) – TotalEnergies service station attendants in France went on strike on Friday to protest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5,5724,5220,5727,5725,5723,5726],"class_list":["post-6845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-france","tag-mainland-france","tag-oil-prices","tag-service-station","tag-service-stations","tag-sophie-binet","tag-totalenergies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}