Paris (AFP)

No way out of the crisis in sight at L'Equipe: the benchmark sports daily will remain absent from newsstands on Friday, on the 7th day of a historic strike against the elimination of about fifty positions, we learned Thursday from the unions and management.

The inter-union (SNJ, SNJ-CGT, etc.) has decided to renew for 24 hours the call to strike launched on January 8.

This call can "be suspended at any time", remind the unions in an email sent to management.

They demand the suspension of the job protection plan (PSE) unveiled in the fall and a meeting with "a representative of the Amaury Group (owner of the team) or a mediator".

The incriminated PES provides for the elimination of around fifty posts, including 47 journalist posts, within the SAS L'Equipe (the daily, the magazine, Vélo Magazine and the weekly France football, in the process of becoming a monthly) which employs 350 people.

A dozen new jobs are planned in parallel to strengthen the Internet offer and increase paid digital subscriptions.

Goal ?

Achieve 5 million euros in savings and avoid 6 million losses in 2021, in a context of falling paper sales made worse by the health crisis and the end of sports competitions in the spring.

On the editorial side, "the smallest sports + will be treated less, an astonishing choice three years from the Paris Olympics," staff representatives indignantly wrote in a text published Thursday on a Mediapart blog.

The project also provides "explicitly to lower the sails" on the cover of 9 Ligue 1 clubs, on the "French 2nd division Championship but also the Top 14 rugby", etc., they write.

What "exasperate" employees subjected to several "restructurings" in recent years.

Faced with the discontent, the management proposed improved starting conditions, but still considered insufficient.

It also proposed an alternative to the PSE, a modified version of a draft collective performance agreement (CPA) rejected this summer by the unions, with a 5% wage cut until the end of 2024 at the latest and the abandonment of 10 days of RTT.

"The editorial staff of the Team is the best paid on the market," explained the general manager of the Team, Jean-Louis Pelé, Thursday in the columns of Le Figaro.

Not enough to calm the troops of which it "hides", according to the unions, "the special working conditions", especially at weekends and at night.

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