UAround ten workers from the Petits Riens stores and the association’s reception centers joined the strike movement started last Friday by the staff of the sorting center in the Brussels municipality of Anderlecht. The Setca and the CNE denounce the lack of social consultation and warn about the process of “mercantilization” of Petits Riens, despite being a “major player in the social economy”.
Last Friday, around 50 people took part in the picket organized in front of the sorting center. Since 6:00 a.m. Tuesday, there have been around fifty of them again, ten of whom have been replaced by staff from stores and reception centers.
In the crosshairs of the strike movement, a restructuring plan deemed “brutal” which involves the announcement of around twenty layoffs (mainly concerning workers at the sorting center). “Social consultation is the big thing forgotten in this restructuring plan,” insist Setca and the CNE. “Not only did management not take the trouble to come and meet the workers on the picket line on Friday, but it is also continuing its dismissal plan according to its own criteria of performance and behavior,” they lament.
On this second day of the strike, however, the unions intend to denounce managerial management more generally, which they consider to be in disagreement with the eminently social DNA of Les Petits Riens. Since the change of management made about a year ago, they point to “increasing pressure” on staff, the demotion of certain employees (instead of offering them training) or even the modification of “more restrictive” schedules without prior social consultation.
“Under the pretext of adapting to fluctuations in the second-hand market, the management committee is doing only one thing: emptying this historic player in the social economy of its reason for being, namely the fight against social exclusion and poverty,” conclude the unions.
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A “brutal” restructuring plan: the Petits Riens lay off around twenty people
Belgium
