The metropolis is not so in its death throes

It took not more than four days to liquidate the last company of heavy ship repair in Marseille. A stroke of a pen, the tribunal de commerce struck card activity which employed 9,000 people thirty years ago and has justified the heavy investment, to build the port of a set of 10 dry docks which still makes it a unique tool on the Mediterranean front. A real mess, but is it really a surprise And can we talk about disaster for the local economy

The collapse of the repair naval Marseilles began in the years 1978-1979 (3,000 jobs lost in one year) and closures and deposits balance sheet, the sector is reduced to the minimum portion. The Union Naval Marseille (UNM), which has to be wound up, employed more than 133 employees and the total number of subcontractors is estimated to be 300 jobs. It is not nothing but this is no longer a dominant activity, as evidenced by the lack of reaction by the public authorities.

The transformation has proceeded slowly, painfully and explained by the evolution of shipbuilding in France but also by the social situation on the port, where the SGC retains close traditions of anarcho-syndicalism in the 1920s. Today, local employers accused the Union of suicidal actions. But history repeats itself. In 1976, Terrin Group had "been penalized by the repetition of the employees of the port strikes" and suffered "of the struggles of the CGT to try to reduce the share of essential outsourcing yet to deal with the irregularity of the workload", note a collective work published sector in 2002 (1). For authors, the scenario is the same for twenty years: "the buyers face the opposition of the employees, the reverting work, seeking to regain much of the lost benefits", without forgetting subcontractors not always respectful of the rules and the law.

The debate is now committed on the need or not for a port as Marseille keep heavy ship repair activity, but the conversion of part of the forms has been engaged in conceding to great boating sites. Marseille took the habit of large yachts in the world come to remake a beauty, plus many freighters or other LNG carriers in major industrial forms. And CMA CGM, 3rd world shipowner, considering even to create a marina and a site naval great pleasure on the 10 form, specially built in 1975 for the maxipétroliers and virtually unused since. A symbol!

But beyond the ship repair, it is the future of the port in Marseille is in question. A port that Frays failures. The liquidation of the UNM adds to the departure of the last traffic of fruits and vegetables and the problems of the container terminal, to the penalty for several weeks due to strikes. The metropolis is not so in its death throes. It is true that the geographical area affected by these problems basins is at the heart of the city of Marseille is only part of the large seaport of Marseille which extends on about 70 kilometres from the old Port to Port-Saint-Louis-du-Rhône from Fos and Lavera. It is this which is at the top of the hexagon and 4th European ports, and even if growth remains well below that of its competitors, not less than 3 billion euros of port and industrial investments are planned by 2012 in the area of Fos with 6,000 jobs in the key. This is not the profile of a moribund economy.

Marseilles even, the port won its letters of nobility in the world of the cruise with 700,000 offer expected this year and 1 million in sights for 2011. And the operation of national interest EuroMediterranean allowed a tertiary reconversion of many spaces dormant along the port.

"Nobody does mean that there is perhaps at the end of the classic port of goods, with a transfer of containers to Fos, traffic passenger and ro/ro remaining in Marseille", notes Jean Domenichino, historian at the UMR Telemme of the University of Provence. The speech is much more politically incorrect port always generates some 20,000 jobs in the territory of the urban community of Marseille, or 7.6 of the private employment. But the debate is finally revealing the need for change of scale and to take into account all of the port entity, from Marseille to Fos, a space still fragmented by the administrative divisions.