For the fifth consecutive day, the newspaper "L'Équipe" does not appear due to a strike by a major part of its employees.
While management believes that a social plan should save the group in the medium term, the strikers insist on the profitability of the group, despite a pandemic context.
The crisis is bogged down within the
L'Équipe
group
: it has been five days, this Wednesday, that the sports daily does not appear on newsstands or in digital version.
And the dialogue between management and employees seems very complicated.
At the heart of these tensions between the two parties is a social plan which provides for the elimination of 50 jobs and the creation of 15 new ones, which leads to the net loss of 35 jobs within the group.
"With this new plan, we are once again asked to cut the workforce," laments at the microphone of Europe 1 Denis Perez, SNJ-CGT union representative.
⚠️ Due to a social movement, we regret not being able to offer you your daily Wednesday on newsstands and digitally.
- THE TEAM (@lequipe) January 12, 2021
More subscribers to recruit
"We are asked at the same time to relaunch the title, to gain subscribers while dealing with fewer sports and fewer clubs, even in football and rugby", continues the union official.
"The OM-PSG-Lyon polarization, rejected by many of our fans, risks getting worse."
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Today, after a very troubled year on the sporting front with the coronavirus crisis, which continues to upset the agenda, "employees are at the end of their rope", assures Denis Perez.
"They gave everything, especially during confinement, to try to keep
L'Equipe
afloat. Successfully, since the losses will be very moderate. At the exit, we tell them 'listen, too bad, to maintain our competitiveness, we are going to cut about 60 posts and obviously you are going to have to do more things and gain subscribers despite all that '. "
My kiosk without L'Equipe.
Without the in-depth investigations of its journalists or the fascinating long-term interviews or the papers on the history of sport.
The Team is missing.
The Team is my family.
The Team has made me grow so much since 2001 ... pic.twitter.com/c5bMDr1jza
- Yoann Riou (@riouyoann) January 13, 2021
Structural crisis or profitable activity?
For its part, the management ensures that the survival of the group in the medium term is threatened.
The confinement accelerated a structural crisis, that of the drop in sales of the paper daily.
The group gave itself two years to significantly boost its digital offering to offset this decline, but it was taken aback.
"
It was much less complicated than what the boss tried to make us believe when he got out of confinement
"
Today, management is advancing forecast losses of 6 million euros for 2021 and up to 10 million for 2023 and 2024. And this, while the shareholder has absorbed the bill related to Covid-19 and bankruptcy from Presstalis.
But this very gloomy picture does not convince the unions.
"
L'Équipe
belongs to the Amaury group. It is a group that made more money in 2020, despite the pandemic. The company that publishes
L'Equipe
had a positive operating result in 2019, 2018 and 2017 . This means that his activity is profitable. Obviously, it was a little more complicated in 2020. It was much less complicated than what the boss, Jean-Louis Pelé, had tried to make us believe after coming out of confinement "We will lose a few million euros, of course, but it still seems a lesser evil compared to everything that happened last year. Remember in particular the first confinement of the total cessation of sport. "