The tertiary sector is not always a "winning service"

One year ago, an industrial symbol of Angers, Angers Technicolor, disappeared, laying off more than 350 persons, in a spray of promises from ministers passing through the city, Since that day, Angers Loire Métropole bought the site and part of the equipments in a attempt to keep fields, buildings and machinery avaiblable for another activity. But, until now, and in spite of local efforts, the place stayed desperately empty.

On October 9th, one of the most important service companies, the call centre Stream, announced that it had choosen to leave one of the floors it rented to Angers Loire Métropole in the Arobase 2 building generating fears that it could depart from the city and settle in another country. The different call centres give job to around 2 000 Angevins and Stream alone, to around 600.

If such an event were to become true in the months to come, efforts to compensate closings of industrial companies by openings of service societies would be jeopardized and a strategy of employment reconquest would be called into question. The presence of such an issue in the electoral campaign would therefore be accentuated. From many political parts, promises have flourished. But their scent is, until now, a little bit funeral.