2023-12-17 16:26:50
Microphone in hand, standing on the steps of Saint-Etienne town hall, Nathalie Devienne begins her speech, holding her paper with a trembling hand. “The time has come for explanations… We have been viscerally attached to our company for so many years…”, declares the spokesperson for the inter-union (FO, CGT, UNSA, CFE-CGC, CFDT). Suddenly tears flow. Encouraged by her comrades, the FNTA-FO Casino general secretary continues in a quavering voice, as if all the emotion of the crowd was passing through her broken voice. The trade unionist summarizes the multiple feelings that agitate the workforce of the Casino group, on this cold morning of Sunday, December 17. She denounces “incoherent strategies”, “the numerous alerts coming from the field” and, above all, the feeling of ” treason “ which predominates.
Nearly 2,000 people responded to the inter-union’s call, gathered in front of Casino’s head office, before marching to town hall. Employees, retirees, families, elected officials, the entire population is waiting, divided between anger and resignation, before a decisive week. A management meeting with the unions is scheduled for Tuesday, December 19, the day before a meeting of creditors, called to decide on the restructuring plan for the group with 50,000 employees in France.
Of the 400 stores under the Casino brand, 291 hypermarkets and 53 Géant Casino would be sold, distributed among several buyers, without any details on the social consequences. Some 18,000 people would be affected. The group developed by Jean-Charles Naouri has more than 9,000 stores, including many local establishments (Petit Casino, Vival, Sherpa, Spar), but also the Monoprix, Naturalia and Franprix brands.
“We are stunned to see the group disband”
“We are in total limbo. We don’t know what our job will become. Everything we know, we learn from the press,” deplores Nelly Berthet, 46 years old. Hired by the first Giant in the history of Casino, in the Saint-Etienne district of Monthieu in 1998, the forty-year-old now works at the group’s headquarters, which has 2,000 employees, opposite Châteaucreux station. “We cannot project ourselves. We would like to hear good news, we are rather stunned to see the group disbanding. We didn’t dare imagine that this might happen one day.” adds Pascal Gomez, 51 years old, twenty-three years of career at Casino, who came to demonstrate with his daughter.
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