Used book – Metaleurop: Workers' Voices, Frédéric H. Fajardie

"May 1, 2003, at the Metaleurop site, formerly Penarroya, formerly Europe's leading lead processing plant, formerly a working-class legend. The sky is low, rather changeable. (?) I stand a little apart. This is probably the last time I'll come here. Everything is already frozen in this place that I knew not so long ago to be so agitated, so seething, when several hundred workers would gather there before launching into one of their exemplary actions that made the masses dizzy and gave bosses fits. I saw the forklifts burn and the fever that gripped everyone (?).

When financiers drive a population into unemployment and misery for their sole profit, it is merely an economic logic. Let them not be surprised then to stir up genuine anger in those they exploit and let them not be disheartened to see that this individual anger can turn into class hatred and organized revolt among these workers whom they treat with such contempt. (?)

Metaleurop-Nord had to disappear; they were too dignified there, they set a bad example. Here, no one thought of prostituting themselves in the reality shows of a rotten TV; they were simply proud to belong to the working class, to work in an elite factory, to produce wealth hoping that it would one day be distributed more fairly.

Workers, some of whom knew my books, brought me to the Metaleurop-Nord site, spoke to me, and chose me to give written form to their memory. This is my sole legitimacy; it comes from them."

F.H. FAJARDIE All royalties from this book are donated in full to the Choeurs de fondeurs association, which brings together former employees of Metaleurop-Nord.