The meeting is set for Tuesday, November 5. The northern distributor Auchan, brand of the Mulliez galaxy, convened the social and economic committees (CSE) of several of its entities in the Lille region (North) for a “update on the company’s situation and its projects”according to information from The Letter confirmed by The Voice of the North and theAgence France-Presse (AFP).
Staff representatives from several group entities, including Auchan Exploitation, “are summoned to an extraordinary CCSE on Tuesday, November 5 from 9 a.m.”specified this Wednesday October 30, 2024 to theAFP a union source who requested anonymity. The distributor's management confirmed this summons, without further comment.
One billion euros in losses in the first half of 2024
The pioneer of hypermarkets is going through difficult economic exercises. Its holding company Elo announced, in July, a net loss of almost one billion euros over the first six months of 2024.
In 2023, Elo – which employed 155,000 people worldwide as of September 30, including 64,400 in France – announced a net loss of 379 million euros and sales down 1.7%, to 32.9 billion euros, while inflation had boosted the turnover of most major retail competitors.
In France, Auchan is the fifth largest distributor with just over 9% of the market, far from the leading trio made up of E.Leclerc (24.1%), Carrefour (21.4%) and Mousquetaires/Intermarché (17.4%). %), and behind Coopérative U (12.2%), according to the Kantar institute.
Read also: Walkout of Auchan employees, near Nantes: “We can no longer make ends meet”
The brand's policy worries the unions
The distributor recently joined forces with its competitors Intermarché and Casino to pool purchases of foodstuffs which they then sell on the shelves of their stores. An alliance concluded for an unusually long period of ten years.
This pooling, as well as the objective announced by management to reduce the commercial surface area of around a third of its hypermarkets “in all its European countries” outside Russia, or ultimately a “average reduction of 25% in sales areas”have aroused concern among trade union organizations in recent months. They expect a potential large-scale social plan.
“When we rationalize, when we mass, we can fear social consequences and that is what we expect to hear on November 5”reacted this Wednesday afternoon Gilles Martin, CFDT Auchan France retail union delegate, to theAFP.
Larger stores have higher fixed costs and are generally less popular with consumers, requiring “a greater effort to get there and do the shopping”explained Olivier Dauvers, journalist specializing in the sector, in July.
