The opening of certain Decathlon stores could be disrupted this Saturday, December 7. Because the brand's 20,000 employees are called to strike at this “start of the Christmas period” to protest against the payment of a billion euros in dividends to the Mulliez family. The latter, also owner of the Auchan group which could lay off 2,400 people, is the founder and owner of the sports brand.
“A billion for shareholders, nothing for employees. Unacceptable,” writes the CFDT in a press release published Wednesday, December 4. The union is calling for a “rally” in front of the Parisian store located on Boulevard de la Madeleine at 1 p.m. A strike picket is also planned at 2 p.m. in front of a store of the brand in Villeneuve-d'Ascq (North).
“While the objectives for the year 2024 will not be achieved despite the Paris 2024 Olympics and the surface area of stores continues to be reduced to reduce costs, such dividends are above ground”, for the CFDT Decathlon . “A billion euros for shareholders and nothing for employees when the vast majority of them only receive the minimum wage, it’s intolerable. CFDT Decathlon demands that the value created by employees be shared,” the union also affirmed in a previous press release published on November 30.
The president of the sporting goods brand Decathlon, Fabien Derville, justified this payment of dividends by emphasizing, in an interview published this Wednesday in La Voix du Nord, that the objective was “a more value-creating use, no wealth”, while recognizing that “the momentum was not ideal at the media level”.
Fabien Derville, also a member of the management board of the Mulliez Family Association (AFM), did not want to detail the planned use of the funds, indicating only that “the vocation is entrepreneurial”: “New professions, acceleration of our businesses heart and, where appropriate, support for the transformation.” “All the Mulliez group brands are very angry, it’s shameful,” the CFDT central delegate at Auchan France, René Carette, stormed to AFP.
The announcement of these dividends comes a few weeks after that of the vast job cuts planned at Auchan. A total of 2,389 jobs are under threat as the food distributor continues its difficult exercises. According to a source close to management, social negotiations on this plan have begun, with “a timetable precisely punctuated until the end of February” and the opening of a voluntary departure plan, which will run until June.
