‘I’m taking you home, Rolande, and I’ll come back and talk to management, straight away. It isn’t possible, it’s a mistake. It has to be a mistake.’
‘Thank you, but no. See me to the exit, that’ll help. I’ll go home by myself, it’s only a couple of minutes away.’
In the Head of HR’s office, Ali Amrouche tries to explain.
‘You can’t fire Ms Lepetit. The whole factory will be up in arms. She’s a courageous woman, everybody looks up to her. We all know that she has to support her son and her penniless mother single-handed. Everyone was shaken up by the accident this morning in her section.’
‘She’s not the one who had the accident, it was Émilienne Machaut who, let me take the opportunity to inform you, is safe and sound.’
‘What about the baby?’
‘Miscarriage. It happens. None of that in any way justifies Ms Lepetit’s behaviour in physically attacking her foreman.’ He straightens his upper body, pushes his shoulders back. I’m here to restore order and discipline in this factory, both of which are sadly lacking. I will not stand for this behaviour.’
The Head of HR shuffles a file around his desk, taps the telephone, folds his hands. ‘Mr Amrouche, my predecessor told me you were a reasonable man, a man of compromise, able to make allowances. So I am keen for you to be the first to know this: in one week, the works council will meet and the question of the last nine months’ unpaid bonuses will once again be on the agenda. If the company were to pay those bonuses today, plus the arrears, its financial stability would be jeopardised. The financial situation is still precarious, as you well know, and there’s a risk the factory will have to close. So, management is going to suggest — and when I say suggest, you know what I mean — that all bonuses be cancelled for this year and paid from next January.’ He spreads his hands and raises his eyebrows.
‘We’ve examined the figures from every angle. There’s no other solution. We are relying on people like you to get everyone to accept it.’
Amrouche stares at the Head of HR. What does this man know about it? Weariness. How to explain the poverty, suffering, fear, and then the eruption of consuming anger and hatred to this fine gentleman with his smart shoes about to be blown to pieces?
‘Does Maréchal approve of Rolande Lepetit’s dismissal?’
The Head of HR stands up and turns to face the window.
‘The matter is closed.’
Seated alone at a table in the empty cafeteria, Amrouche is drinking a coffee and thinking things over. The Head of HR, what a shit. ‘My predecessor spoke to me about you’ … and drops two bombshells, without even being aware of it. What do I do? ‘You’re a reasonable man’. So what? The bonuses can wait until the works council meeting, I’m not supposed to know about that. As for Rolande, by the end of the lunch break the whole factory will have heard. If the guys find out that I knew and that I didn’t say or do anything, they won’t forgive me. Rolande, a woman who’s been through the mill like me, and who gets on with things. Never off sick, a hard worker, tough, proud, honest. Better than me. A man of compromise, huh! A bitter taste of coffee on his tongue and at the corners of his mouth. A man who compromises? True enough: because I’m a broken man. Images of the nearby Pondange iron and steelworks where he worked for ten years flood back. He loved the heat, the noise, the physical exertion, the danger too, and the sense of comradeship that went with it. Not like here. And then the exhilarating struggle to save the works. They’d felt so powerful, all united. Followed by total failure. The works dismantled, obliterated from the valley. A working class dynamited, like the blast furnaces. Tears welled up in his eyes each time he walked along the swollen river banks, the concrete bases where the blast furnaces once stood now overgrown with grass. One thing was certain: they were the winners, them, the other side. You have to live with it. Be shrewd, hold out. For now, get Rolande reinstated. At least do that much. Go and see Maréchal, a racist bastard, but a former steelworker and capable of understanding, not like that arsehole Head of HR. He’ll get her reinstated even if she did knock him flat.
But no sign of Maréchal anywhere in his section, or in the offices. He ought to be here at this time of day. What shall I do? I’ll go and talk to Nourredine, he works in the same section as Rolande, he knows her and values her work. Nourredine is shocked when Amrouche informs him of Rolande’s dismissal. Rolande, with her tall, familiar form and her clear, warm, attentive gaze. Always ready to offer a sympathetic gesture or word in passing. She helped me get through my early days in the factory, when I was just a shy and miserable kid. It’s thanks to her I’ve found my place here. We can’t abandon her, after the horror of the accident, on top of everything. He asks the others to take over his job while he goes and has it out with Maréchal, who is nowhere to be found. Back to packaging and a brief collective discussion. The horror of the accident still hangs over them — the white light, the scream, the juddering sheet-metal walls, Émilienne’s lifeless body glimpsed in the crush.
And the outcome? The production line wasn’t even brought to a complete standstill. Some of the girls are back at work without a thorough safety check being done. Rolande is fired and that bastard Maréchal’s made himself scarce. It might even transpire it was his idea, to create a diversion so that everyone would be talking about Rolande’s dismissal instead of the accident. There’s electricity everywhere, in one form or another, at all the work stations. If we don’t do something, we’ll all get electrocuted. It’s vital to see the girls in finishing at coffee break.
A twenty-minute break, just time to catch the girls as they head down the main corridor to the cafeteria and the men from packaging drag them out of the back exit to the waste ground behind the factory, where they all sit around on discarded pallets. A strange place, this hastily erected sheet-metal cube on wasteland in the bottom of a valley overgrown with weeds and scrub. It stands on the site where, less than a generation ago, the Lorraine blast furnaces roared, one of the world’s most powerful iron and steel industries. Now, the forests covering the hills slowly regain domination both of the landscape and the imagination of the people who live there. It’s very chilly. Nourredine’s friend Étienne watches the girls. They’re beautiful, all of them. Why didn’t you think of chatting them up sooner? Are you blind, or what? Amrouche hangs around and goes to sit down with them.
Nourredine climbs on to a pallet, tall and slim in his grey work overalls, his ascetic face tense and ill at ease. He blurts out: ‘Maréchal got Rolande fired.’ Amrouche, uncomfortable, says nothing. A few moments of total silence. The girls are shivering with the cold and fear. Then Aisha stands up, her arms folded over her chest, her voice and lips trembling slightly.
At last she has found the words to describe the death of the Korean engineer, only a month ago. Everyone’s heard about it, but she witnessed it, she was at her work station in section four, next to the rotor when it broke down. The engineer came, he pressed the button at the end of the line to stop the conveyor, removed the safety housing from the rotor and got right inside the machine to repair it. Aisha was standing behind him. Another Korean was passing by, he didn’t understand why the conveyor had stopped, didn’t ask the women workers, and in any case, he didn’t speak French. Then, before anybody could stop him, he pressed the button to switch the power back on and start up the conveyor again. There was no circuit breaker on the rotor, and the engineer’s head was sliced clean off.