The management of L'Equipe wanted, among other things, to increase the weekly working time, reduce the number of RTTs, and ask the employees to lower their wages by 10%. In return, it undertook not to make any economic redundancies.
On Tuesday, employees of the sports media group again refused this savings plan supposed to allow the group to cope with a difficult period.
"We are not hiding, we will not be signing," union official SNJ [National Union of Journalists] Francis Magois told Wednesday's Press Correspondence after a final meeting with management on Tuesday.
"A deficit of more than 16 million euros"
SAS L'Equipe, which employs 355 people, includes the daily L'Equipe , L'Equipe Magazine , Vélo Magazine , France Football and Sport & Style . Management had estimated in June that 2020 would be "the worst year of SAS L'Equipe with a deficit of more than 16 million euros".
The daily L'Equipe thus suffered from the cessation of sports competitions due to the health crisis. He sees no immediate improvement and expects to be in the red in 2021 and 2022.
After several departure plans in recent years, management was planning to use a "collective performance agreement", a recent device created by the Macron ordinances allowing companies in difficulty to renegotiate working hours and wages with the unions.
Management made new proposals on July 3, for example proposing that wage cuts be reversible from 2025, and that a third of natural departures be replaced.
Employees propose an effort on executive salaries
These proposals were refused in a letter signed by 225 employees. They proposed for their part an effort on the rent of the headquarters, on the salaries of the directors, and especially that the group's parent company, the Amaury group, is helping the group to overcome this crisis.
"There is no plan B," said the general manager of the L'Equipe group, Jean-Louis Pelé. "If we were not to reach this collective performance agreement, we would have to work on new sources of savings which will include all our expenses including the wage bill," he said, not to mention the social plan. Negotiations remain open until July 31.
According to Francis Magois of the SNJ, Jean-Louis Pelé "was astonished by the reaction of the employees who no longer accept all the reorganizations implemented since 2012 and express real unhappiness".
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