Paris (AFP)
The three representative unions of SFR, Unsa, CFDT and CFTC, denounce Wednesday a "social, economic and financial scandal", at the end of a first negotiation meeting with the management which announced 1,700 job cuts in 2021.
This third social plan since 2012 provides for 400 departures in stores and 1,300 in other functions of the company on a voluntary basis.
They will be combined with a "large recruitment plan for 1,000 young graduates over four years", as well as a strengthening of the company's learning and training policy, according to SFR.
It responds, according to management, to the drop in footfall in shops - it has fallen by 30% due in particular to the health crisis - and the "continuous progression" of online purchases.
It is a question of "eliminating 1,700 positions on the Telecom perimeter on the basis of an artificial and unacceptable construction of + new + strategic orientations", denounce the unions in a common "manifesto".
If they say they are "ready" to "discuss a new definition of strategy, the establishment of genuine professional mobility, they will refuse to be the instrument of a social, economic and financial scandal".
The unions ask for an "agreement on method" and deem "unacceptable" a negotiation which "aims to reduce the workforce of the Telecom division by nearly 20% while the excellent results of the period (...) should have led SFR to organize a discussion around a sharing of the results ".
"The management refuses any discussion and wants to ensure a voluntary departure plan over three months for 1,700 employees of the Telecom division by saying that it will recruit 1,000 young people over four years (by 2025), a posting measure ", Abdelkader Choukrane, central union delegate Unsa (the first union in the company) told AFP.
Making this announcement "while 97% of Telecom employees have been teleworking since November and 52% of those employed in distribution are on short-time working, is a source of great concern in an already deleterious social climate", he lamented .
In an internal e-mail to SFR employees that AFP consulted, the management of the company regretted that the trade unions "laid down before any negotiation requirements incompatible with the situation of the company and the need for its transformation ", demanding in particular" a commitment to maintain employment until 2025 (on the basis of the workforce at January 31, 2021) ".
She warned that if the unions did not go back on this prerequisite, she would see "the failure of negotiations" and "quickly present the project for the development of organizations, as well as the social support measures".
SFR, which has around 15,000 employees, increased its turnover by 2.4% to 10.6 billion euros last year.
In the third quarter of 2020, the company saw its revenues increase by 4%, to 2.75 billion euros, on the French market.
The company claims over the same period 21,000 additional customers on landline (+113,000 on fiber) and 25,000 additional subscribers on mobile.
The unions recall that during the last social plan in 2017, "5,000 jobs have already been cut with hiring promises never kept".
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