French ex-staff sue Goodyear over 'chemical exposure'

Around 1,000 former employees at a Goodyear factory in France announced Tuesday that they are suing the US tyre-maker, accusing the company of exposing them to dangerous chemicals.

Goodyear shut the factory in Amiens, President Emmanuel Macron's hometown in the industrial north of France, in 2014 after a bitter six-year dispute between staff and management.

All 1,143 employees at the site lost their jobs.

Most of them are now suing their former employer for allegedly "exposing them to dangerous products without informing them, for cost reasons," the factory's former CGT union leader Mickael Wamen told AFP.

"Goodyear put us in danger in order to shave some cash off the price of the tyres being made," he said.

According to the legal complaint filed at a court in Nanterre in the northern Paris suburbs, the company is accused of exposing employees to "harmful products without protection when substitutes were available".

The company "wilfully neglected to warn and inform its employees of ..