2023-06-26 10:54:52
The Carrefour group, committed to a policy of significant cost reductions, indicated on Monday June 26 that until “979 departures are likely to occur” at its headquarters in France, as part of a reorganization which should also melt the European workforce.
The distributor presented Monday to the social partners a “new organization of head offices in France” and indicated that “these departures will only concern head office employees, excluding those in stores or warehouses”. Different sources interviewed estimate that around 7,000 people work in the distributor’s headquarters, in Massy (Essonne), Évry (Essonne) and Mondeville (Calvados).
These departures “can only intervene on a strictly voluntary basis, and within the framework of quality social support”, still assures Carrefour. Workforce reductions in Europe are not yet known to date.
” More efficient “
In mid-June, the CFDT had indicated that “the first departures on a voluntary basis could take place at the end of August, or even well before for employees producing a permanent contract abroad”. This headcount reduction target was known, and the specialized mediaThe letter a revealed at the end of May that‘”a thousand posts” were “targeted solely on the France scope of the group”.
This reorganization is part of the strategic plan for 2026, concocted for the distributor by its CEO, Alexandre Bompard. In November 2022, he announced a new plan to“cost savings” of 4 billion euros, notably through “significant staff reductions in each” European seats.
The group’s CEO, who felt that Carrefour should be ” more efficient “ and needed a “simplification shock”, had not given any indication of the extent of these reductions. He simply stated that‘”in Europe there is a huge pooling potential to be exploited” and “everything that needs to be pooled in our organization will be”.
A social policy criticized
The trade unions representing the distributor’s employees have been very critical of social policy since the arrival of Alexandre Bompard, former president of Europe 1 (2008-2010), then of Fnac (2011-2017).
The unions accuse Alexandre Bompard of being the craftsman, with the passage of many businesses in lease-management, of a low-noise social breakage. In this form of franchise, Carrefour remains the owner of the business but outsources the management of the store. The CFDT estimates that the workforce of Carrefour in France has shrunk by 30,000 people since 2018, going from 115,000 employees to 85,000.
The CEO defended his record at the group’s general meeting in May, saying that when he took over as head of the group, “all industry experts” said that the hypermarket format ” was dead “. Since, Carrefour “has not closed any hypermarkets while other players have done so”he pleaded, assuring that “Each of the hypermarkets that have been leased-managed has since progressed”.
Carrefour achieved in 2022 a turnover up by 16%, to 90.8 billion euros, and a net profit jumping to 1.35 billion euros, i.e. 26% better than the previous year. The second largest distributor in France, behind the independents E.Leclerc, will publish its financial results for the first half of 2023 on July 26.
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