Paris (AFP)

The employees of L'Equipe again refused the savings plan presented by management to allow the sports media group to face a difficult period.

"We are not hiding, we will not sign," said SNJ union delegate Francis Magois to the Press Correspondence on Wednesday, after a final meeting on Tuesday with management.

SAS L'Equipe brings together the newspaper L'Equipe, L'Equipe Magazine, Vélo Magazine, France Football, Sport & Style, and employs 355 people.

Management estimated in June that 2020 would be "the worst year for SAS L'Équipe with a deficit of more than 16 million euros". The daily L'Equipe, which suffered from the cessation of sports competitions, sees no immediate improvement and even expects to be in the red in 2021 and 2022.

After several departure plans in recent years, management wanted to use a "collective performance agreement", a recent device created by the Macron ordinances, which allows companies in difficulty to renegotiate working hours and wages with the unions.

The management wanted in particular to increase the weekly working time, to decrease the number of RTT, and to ask the employees to lower their wages by 10%. The management of the newspaper undertook in return not to proceed with any economic dismissal.

Management made new proposals Friday, July 3, including proposing that wage cuts are reversible from 2025, and that a third of natural departures be replaced.

But 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," warned 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," Pelé told AFP, not to mention a social plan. .

"Our priority to date is to respond to the strong economic constraints that affect the L'Equipe group while maintaining employment, this is the primary virtue of this collective performance agreement project. If it were not to succeed, the economic constraint would remain the same, "he said. Negotiations remain open until July 31.

According to Francis Magois of the SNJ, Jean-Louis Pelé "was surprised by the reaction of the employees who no longer accept all the reorganizations put in place since 2012 and express real unhappiness".

© 2020 AFP