The procession bringing together 1,650 people, according to the authorities, 3,000 to 4,000 according to the unions, set off this Sunday, late in the morning under a blue sky and a winter sun, at 2°C from the group’s imposing headquarters , a long glass liner located opposite the TGV station.
The walk lasted two hoursat the call of the inter-union FO, CGT, CFDT, UNSA and CFE-CGC, mobilized in the face of the difficulties of the group placed at the end of October in the so-called accelerated safeguard procedure in order to implement the restructuring of its unsustainable debt.
To the change in shareholding, with a takeover by the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, the Frenchman Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière and the British fund Attestor on the horizon March-April 2024, is added the fear of a sale “to the cutting”.
“We live by and for Casino. It risks being a disaster”
“Gentlemen Macron, Kretinsky, Ladreit de la Charrière, thousands of people are counting on you here in Saint-Etienne to keep their jobs,” launches Jean Pastor (CGT), one of the spokespersons for the inter-union, at the end of the parade.
For months, everyone has been mobilizing to avoid “a new Manufrance” in Saint-Etienne, a town of 170,000 inhabitants threatened with economic asphyxiation. Here, the liquidation of the mail order company in 1985 – almost a hundred years after its creation – left a bitter memory, as did the closure by the State of its military arms factory a decade later.
“We live by and for Casino. It risks being a disaster,” explains Thierry Renaud, forty-year-old boss of a printing company that is 80% dependent on the mass distribution group.
“Casino is a symbol”It is “the group that has given work to thousands of artisans and businesses” of the region, says former LR deputy for Loire Dino Cinieri, also ex-boss of a security company whose brand was for a long time the biggest client.
Like him, many local elected officials joined the parade bringing together group employees, subcontractors and residents of the region. The unions had also called for mobilization “the players and supporters of AS Saint-Etienne”in memory of the old ties which unite the group to the club which experienced hours of glory before its relegation to Ligue 2. The Saint-Etienne stadium, the bustling “cauldron”bears the name of Geoffroy Guichard, the grocer who founded the group in 1898.
“The boat sinks”
Véronique Molinski, aged around sixty, came to march in solidarity, wearing a green scarf around her neck, in the colors of the Saint-Etienne team: “Many people in my family have worked there and I am a loyal customer” of Casino, she explains.
Alongside its involvement in local sports clubs, the distributor played a role in the construction, in 1987, of the city’s Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, by architect Didier Guichard, one of the founder’s descendants.
“How did we get to this point? Today the boat is sinking, in 2024 Casino may no longer exist and our jobs will disappear”says, in tears, Nathalie Devienne (FO), one of the spokespersons for the inter-union.
An offer that Carrefour would have made for “acquire, in addition to a few Casino supermarkets and hypermarkets, 7,000 small local convenience stores under the Petit Casino, Vival, Spar or Sherpa brands”according to the Echos website, aroused astonishment and anger on Sunday.
“We are used to learning a lot about our company through the press, but we didn’t expect it”comments Nathalie Devienne. “Especially since when we met Philippe Palazzi on Tuesday (editor’s note: a representative of the consortium of buyers led by Daniel Kretinsky), he told us that only hypermarkets and supermarkets were for sale”underlines Jean Pastor.
The inter-union called for a national mobilization in Casino warehouses on Friday and in stores on Saturday.