2023-12-08 02:43:38
The anxiety of employees. Casino is in serious financial difficulty and the unions now fear an “unprecedented social breakdown” within the brand, after a meeting Thursday in Paris with management and the consortium of buyers. According to the inter-union association of the Saint-Étienne distributor (FO, CGT, CFDT, UNSA, CFE-CGC), the consortium of investors who are due to take control of Casino in the first quarter of 2024 would have claimed “no longer able to respect its initial plan from July 2023”.
The group agreed with its creditors at the end of July on a restructuring of its debt, accompanied by a change in shareholding with a takeover by the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, the Frenchman Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière and the British fund Attestor. But in the meantime, its economic situation has not improved and it indicated last week that it was ready to sell stores if competitors were interested, which raised fears of a “slice sale” of the group to employees.
The representatives of the consortium, Philippe Palazzi, who is expected to become CEO of Casino once the change in shareholding has been carried out, and Denis Olivennes, Daniel Kretinsky’s henchman in France, told union representatives on Thursday “to support the will of the Casino group to sell all hypermarkets and supermarkets”, according to the inter-union.
Several candidates for takeover
This acceleration of planned disposals is explained by the economic situation of the group which still had 200,000 employees worldwide at the end of 2022, including 50,000 in France under well-known brands such as Monoprix, Franprix or Pao de Açucar in Brazil. The buyers reaffirmed their commitment to taking control of the group on Thursday, but the union organizations estimated that the sale of large formats “will necessarily lead to unprecedented social disruption in headquarters and logistics, as well as deterioration of working conditions in the stores.”
Asked Thursday evening by AFP, the consortium of buyers and the current management did not react immediately. On Tuesday, a thousand Casino group employees worried about the future of the distributor had already mobilized in Saint-Étienne, where the distributor’s headquarters are located, and in the Paris region.
The inter-union, which is due to meet on Friday, reminded AFP on Thursday that the five organizations making up it could “consider” new mobilizations so that employees “are respected and heard”. She also intends to go to the Paris commercial court on Monday, where a request for extension of the accelerated safeguard period must be examined, on the eve of a central social and economic committee of Distribution Casino France.
6,000 direct jobs in danger?
Another meeting with representatives of the buyers is also planned for December 19 in Saint-Étienne. Despite Casino’s critical situation, its stores arouse desire and the group says it has received several expressions of interest. Auchan and Intermarché are the only ones to have officially confirmed a large-scale joint offer.
Nathalie Devienne, spokesperson (FO) for the inter-union, told AFP that the unions had stressed that it would be necessary to “also look at the support of employees who are going to be transferred” to groups other than Casino if all or part of the stores are sold. “There is no job loss but their situation will have nothing to do with what they experienced with Casino,” she said.
In this context of uncertainty, the group has put in place a “support and listening system for employees”, according to a union source. Jean Pastor, CGT union representative for the Casino group, ventured an estimate on Tuesday of the number of jobs threatened: “you take the headquarters, 2000 employees, you take the eight warehouses which are leaving, we make calculations, with 300 per warehouse: 2400. That’s 4400, we’ll eventually talk about perhaps 6000 direct jobs, to which indirect jobs are added.
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