Norbert expands further

Norbert Dentressangle group has taken over the operations of Fiege in Portugal, Spain and Italy.

Yes may be he has expanded, but they do not advertise the redundancies at my depot in Santes Lille. 46 drivers gone to make way for Poles & Romanians.
Just finished yesterday, looking for work doing european.

norberts European trucks are all on rumo plates now, I thought he was in trouble with the French government over it but it seems alas no.

swift trick buy a rumo company with 3 trucks and hey presto overnight 100 rumo plated trucks.

scum.

French flyer I didn’t think they had any English drivers left based there, me and my oldman worked for santes depot on liquid food tanks years ago when it was a proper French firm (not a eastern European driver in sight), then the oldman went on powder tanks when they sold all the liquid food tanks off .

There’s no hope if even the French are sacking their own countrymen to make way for Eastern Europeans.

Well all have to up skill.

Gazza1970.
Yeah there were just 2 off us left after moving from the Brugge depot back in 2007.
Now sadly all gone.
Were you their with Mark & Bernard.

Silver_Surfer:
There’s no hope if even the French are sacking their own countrymen to make way for Eastern Europeans.

Well all have to up skill.

I can’t see how the French unions have put up with this.
I know that ND bought up some Rom and Pol companies, but didn’t know that it was at the expense of their own

hi Frenchflyer
Bernard is my old man,
I was there 19yrs ago when they had them old twingo’s (Renault mangers)
used to be a good job back in them days.

There used to be a ND driver who was English and lived in Ouistreham and he had a beard and long hair and ate in the Rouitier there.

pierrot 14:
I can’t see how the French unions have put up with this.
I know that ND bought up some Rom and Pol companies, but didn’t know that it was at the expense of their own

at the expense of their own? can you imagine a french driver loading in metz on a friday afternoon, spend the weekend in a rainy autohof near berlin and deliver monday morning in poznan for example? yeah, me neither…

Spoke to a French nor a in London a year or so ago & he said they could get 3 bulgos or rumos, not sure which for the price of a Frenchman.

that was normal.
you would be loading in Italy for spain and at the same factory their would be a Spanish driver loading for the uk
you would be wk ended in spain and he would be wk ended in the uk.

milodon:
at the expense of their own? can you imagine a french driver loading in metz on a friday afternoon, spend the weekend in a rainy autohof near berlin and deliver monday morning in poznan for example? yeah, me neither…

You have a point there, but also remember that until very recently many of these trucks were driven by French drivers, some of whom have been working for those companies for many years. They have not suddenly become useless, they’re simply too expensive and inconvenient compared to a Romanian for example. You’ve described yourself a few months back the situation in Sweden (or was it Denmark?) where companies that used to employ your fellow Estonians, now employ Romanians instead. Its not because they’re any better at the job, or more willing to do the job, but because they’re much cheaper and easier to manipulate.

I used to work for a timber importation company in England that started to bring in Estonian workers through an employment agency in Parnu. Our company employed them and provided them with housing and they were treated terribly, because the company controlled their wages and where they lived. Most of them hated it and wanted to go back home but felt trapped. The local English employee’s like myself couldn’t be manipulated because we went to our own homes at night and we weren’t in a strange and foreign country so the company didn’t even try it on, but the Estonians were often made to work 7 days a week for no extra money (salaried) where the English only worked 5 and sometimes 6. In the end the company stopped employing English people completely and went to an all Estonian workforce, I was the last non-Estonian at our yard. I had nothing against the Estonians, in fact I would always stick up for them when others tried to bully them or be derogatory but its just another example of a western European company exploiting a cheaper, more convenient workforce at the expense of locals who are perfectly capable of doing the job that they always have done.

well my only point was that there are not that many frenchmen willing to do the job the romanians and ■■■■■■■ do - I do agree that in many instances the workforce from the east is hired to replace willing and able local workforce but not always.

milodon:
well my only point was that there are not that many frenchmen willing to do the job the romanians and [zb] do - I do agree that in many instances the workforce from the east is hired to replace willing and able local workforce but not always.

How do you know the french wouldnt do it, norberts, transalliance etc all suddenly overnight found french drivers picking and choosing their work…

HHhhmmmmm or maybe IT WAS money related.

yes, I suppose I must bow to your unlimited wisdom regarding all transportation done in europe, a frenchman would happily spend the weekend in an autohof, followed by tipping in poznan.and possibly with some st petersburg or kazan thrown in for good measure?

I really would be interested in knowing the wages a typical french lorry driver would want for tramping all over europe, weeks away at a time.

milodon:
yes, I suppose I must bow to your unlimited wisdom regarding all transportation done in europe, a frenchman would happily spend the weekend in an autohof, followed by tipping in poznan.and possibly with some st petersburg or kazan thrown in for good measure?

I really would be interested in knowing the wages a typical french lorry driver would want for tramping all over europe, weeks away at a time.

From the drivers I have spoken to in the past who have worked for French firms and were then replaced with Poles or Romanians, they were not going to Berlin, Poznan or St. Petersburg but largely going back and forth between France and the UK or other neighbouring countries. Those same drivers had in many cases worked for these companies for many years, and were simply replaced because it was company/corporate procedure to do so in the name of cost cutting. These same companies still wish to operate in France, transpoting French goods or goods destined to France but they dont want to employ Frenchmen and allow them employment and participation in their own economy and in my opinion that can never be right. If the only way you can get a job driving a French truck for these big French companies, is to be non-French, there is something very wrong. These replacement of workforce dont take in to account a drivers ability or willingness to do a job, its simply wholesale redundancy based on French nationality/residence in France.

well that clears it up a bit, I was under the impression that the ro-pl plated trucks were simply replacing romanian and polish companies doing the same work, as I have rarely seen a french driver doing international work going further than antwerp or liege

You’re q right there Milodon about the F drivers never straying far from home but these pan european logistic giants will always favour whoever is cheapest, sadly for us drivers from the old ‘west’ we’re not even in with a chance nowadays, makes me angry, with the politicians not the eastern drivers who are themselves a victim of this ridiculous EU and its ways. Very few Danes driving export these days yet we’re still exporting a lot. By the way are you yourself back in the saddle or still being a shop assistant or whatever it was?

Well fancy that, the French that many on this forum admire so much for ‘sticking up for themselves’ are shafted. And is it any wonder when you consider how many hours French drivers work.