Bordeaux (AFP)

The group South West (GSO) announced Wednesday, during a special CSE, "a plan for voluntary departures on 132 posts, including 18 journalists," told AFP the CEO Patrick Venries.

This plan of departure is part of a "four-year strategic plan, 2019/2023", he explained, also providing for the closure of the South West location in Angoulême where the Charente Libre is based, owned by GSO. .

The closure of the local Angouleme does not question the edition of Southwest Charente, which maintains an office in Cognac.

Patrick Venries justified the reduction in the payroll by the fact that "activities related only to paper", that is to say to the manufacture of the newspaper, including its distribution and printing, "must find an economic balance that is not reached today ".

This plan of departure is part of a "strategic plan for the four years to come 2019/2023" aimed in particular, according to the boss of the group South West, "to put more importance and strength on the digital." "The reason for this strategic plan, he said, is that, at 18 months, if we do not save the payroll, we will not spend the year 2021".

"We asked for a majority agreement of negotiations on the plan" and "we would like to start the negotiations in September so as to have finished them at the end of January, then to carry out the reorganizations, once negotiated, which will make it easier for all those who will want the support package at the start, "he said.

"The ideal is that the departure plan be effective from the summer of 2020, so that we can reap the benefits quickly and continue our development," Venries added.

South West is today, according to his boss, "a totally indebted company that has found significant room for maneuver of cash after various successive plans", but must "keep its room for maneuver to move forward".

"Eighteen positions of journalists suppressed, it is a lot", reacted with the AFP Catherine Meuthon, delegate SNJ, majority with the CSE.

"We SNJ, she added, we will fight alongside this plan, for the depreciation of the drafting and the tenure of fixed-term contracts in South West which has 70, including at least thirty full-time equivalents. It will be our fight ".

On the side of the CGT "no comment for now," told AFP the secretary general of the CSE Denis Delmas.

The South West Group (GSO) media group continued its recovery last year, recording consolidated net profit, excluding exceptional effects, of 8.2 million euros, compared with around five million in 2017.

? 2019 AFP