2023-08-18 11:53:00
For the first time, buyers of Delhaize stores met their future employees. It was in the very first Delhaize supermarket to open in Belgium, in Flagey, that this meeting took place. For the unions, it did not go well.
It is in front of the Delhaize store in Flagey, the very first in Belgium, that the buyers and future employees meet for the very first time. The two buyers of the store arrived quietly by bicycle.
They didn’t comment. Nevertheless, they were already able to explain their project to us last week, explaining that they did indeed intend to reopen this now franchised store, in October or November. The buyers had told us regarding these promises not to lay off anyone and to keep the current status of each of the 68 employees, that is to say, the salary and working conditions.
Many unanswered questions
A first meeting took place, it ended a little before 1 pm, because the workers decided to leave the store. There is a picket now, which is organized. Shopping carts were put in front of the doors, preventing customers from entering this Delhaize.
This meeting took placenot surprisingly, not well, not well at all“, explains Arnaud Dereume, itinerant CNE union delegate to Delhaize. “Lots of unanswered questions and very important questions regarding the job, how they’re going to set up the work, the structures. Very, very few concrete answers“, he adds.
It wasn’t going to be Care Bear country today
The buyers had promised not to lay off, but that does not reassure the workers: “We know very well that these are lies. That’s what I explained to them. Why would we be more convinced today than on March 7? It wasn’t going to be Care Bear country today. Of course not. I think they too realized that it wasn’t going to be that easy. We will continue to boycott. We’ll keep doing things we’ve been doing since March 7.”, he says.
A designated facilitator
Baron Robert Tollet, former president of the Central Economic Council reputed to be close to the Socialists, was appointed facilitator in the context of the conflict at Delhaize. His appointment by the Minister of the Economy, Pierre-Yves Dermagne (PS), took place recently, the minister’s spokesman said on Friday, confirming information from the daily De Standaard.
Aged 76, former manager of CGER-Holding among others, Robert Tollet has a “rich experience“which will allow him to work”hand in hand with the social conciliator and the minister“in order to bring the unions and the management of the company around the table, said the entourage of Pierre-Yves Dermagne.
The social conflict at Delhaize has been going on for several months, with the unions opposing the group’s desire to franchise all of its Belgian supermarkets.
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