un vast social plan. The distributor Casino, whose reins were taken over at the end of March, will reduce its workforce by 1,293 to a maximum of 3,267 positions. The “reorganization project” was presented this Wednesday, April 24 to staff representatives.
It “plans 1,293 net job cuts within the group’s head office functions, including 554 in Saint-Étienne,” Casino indicates in a press release. The group’s historic headquarters would retain “1,010 positions out of 1,564 current ones” in Saint-Étienne, specifies Casino, which also has headquarters in Vitry-sur-Seine (Franprix brand), Clichy (Monoprix) and Bordeaux (Cdiscount).
Concretely, the social and economic committees of companies concerned by employment protection plans (PSE) have been summoned to a meeting scheduled for May 6 where “an information-consultation procedure prior to the implementation of “a draft job protection plan,” explains the distributor.
“A new development trajectory”
The number of positions retained at the gigantic Saint-Étienne headquarters, located at the exit of Châteaucreux station, was the subject of all the attention of employees on site, local elected officials and even the government.
The mayor (ex-LR) Gaël Perdriau, also president of the Saint-Etienne metropolis, reacted on Wednesday by mentioning a “significant number of job cuts”, and said he was “particularly attentive to the job protection plan which must be implemented in the coming weeks. He says he wants to meet “soon again with the management team in place to consolidate the group’s presence in Saint-Étienne”.
READ ALSO Casino: in Saint-Étienne, employees no longer believe in miraclesCasino’s debt incurred by the previous management had pushed the group to increase the number of sales, including in 2023 almost all of its large format stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets, to its competitors Intermarché, Auchan and Carrefour.
The group, which today brings together brands well known to the French, notably Monoprix and Franprix, also has almost no international presence even though it still employed 200,000 people worldwide and 50,000 in France at the end of 2022.READ ALSO Who is Philippe Palazzi, the new Mr. Casino? Quoted in the press release, the new general director Philippe Palazzi believes that “this transformation project would constitute a key step”, which “would allow Casino to embark on a new development trajectory”. He plans to “reinvest in points of sale and rehumanize them”.
The group also formalized on Wednesday a purchasing alliance with its competitors Intermarché and Auchan, for an unusually long period of ten years. The distributors thus hope to “sustain and develop partnerships with the agricultural world and French industrial players over the long term”.
