French government summons Alstom boss over end to trainmaking in Belfort

PARIS (Reuters) - The head of Alstom was summoned by the French government for an explanation on Thursday after the company revealed plans to bring over 130 years of trainmaking to an end at its Belfort plant in eastern France.

Alstom on Wednesday said that by 2018 it would transfer production from Belfort, where it made its first steam locomotives in 1880, to its plant in Reichshoffen, about 200 kilometres (124 miles) further north near the German border.

Unions have for years feared a wind-down at Belfort. Those concerns increased in 2014 after the company's associated power turbine-making activities in the same town were sold to U.S.-based General Electric.

The GE deal was deeply controversial in France, fuelling concerns about the loss of industrial power it appeared to symbolize, and about the future of French jobs as the country's economy stalled.

Ahead of presidential elections in April 2017, those concerns are still at the front of voters' minds.

As part of the GE deal, the government sought to protect the remaining train-making business by acquiring voting control over a 20 percent stake in the shrunken Alstom business.

In May last year, the then Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron said he did not want to see any redundancies at the Belfort train plant.

Junior Industry Minister Christophe Sirugue, Macron's successor, told Europe 1 radio that he and Finance and Economy Minister Michel Sapin would meet with Alstom CEO Henri Poupart-Lafarge "so that we can get explanations regarding this announcement,"

"At this stage I consider that nothing is final," Sirugue added.

Some 400 workers out of Belfort's total 480 are to be offered jobs at Alstom's other 11 French sites and the Belfort site would be refocused on maintenance and repairs, Alstom has said. The company employs about 9,000 people in all.

During the summer, Alstom missed out on a French train-building contract when the state railway operator SNCF's affiliate Akiem, a joint venture with Deutsche Bank, awarded a contract to build 44 locomotives to the German company Vossloh.

Unions and local politicians have called on the government to intervene and overturn that decision.

Alstom has been winning contracts elsewhere, but in many cases these have involved agreements to build the trains in the countries where the orders have been made.

(Reporting by Yann Le Guenigou, Dominique Vidalon, Andrew Callus and Michel Rose; Editing by Leigh Thomas)