The distributor Auchan presented to its staff representatives on Tuesday, November 5, a draft social plan threatening 2,389 jobs in France, notably through the closure of around ten stores, we learned from management on Tuesday.
In detail, Auchan, which employs around 54,000 people in France, plans to cut 784 positions within its headquarters and 915 positions in stores.
The group plans to stop direct home delivery activity, which would result in 224 job cuts. And it plans to close around ten unprofitable points of sale (466 positions eliminated), including three hypermarkets in Clermont-Ferrand Nord (Puy-de-Dôme), Woippy (Moselle) and Bar-le-Duc (Meuse), and in a supermarket, in Aurillac (Cantal).
Management hopes to limit the number of redundancies through support for the employees concerned, retraining training, reclassification leave and voluntary departure plan.
It also provides for the creation of 114 positions in the activities of “drive” and 205 within support functions.
“It is not a degrowth project that we want to manage, reducing costs is a means, not an end.“, assured the boss of the distributor Guillaume Darrasse to several media including AFP.
Auchan Retail had already announced in September 2020 the elimination of 1,475 positions in France, after a voluntary departure plan of more than 500 positions in January of the same year.
Long considered one of the best-performing players in social terms within mass distribution, Auchan has had a string of bad economic years and its holding company Elo Groupe announced in July a net loss of nearly a billion euros on the first six months of 2024.
