The management of the distribution giant Auchan is preparing to announce a vast voluntary departure plan on Tuesday. In total, it plans to eliminate 2,100 to 2,300 positions, half in stores and the other half among support and purchasing functions, according to information from La Lettre. According to our colleagues, job creation could however be carried out in parallel.
Staff representatives from several entities of the northern group were summoned on Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. to CSEs in the Lille region, for an “update on the situation of the company and its projects”, according to a source close to the matter. Unions fear bad news on the employment front. The management of the Auchan group, contacted by AFP, did not wish to comment.
To date, the company employs around 54,000 people in France. 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. The pioneer of the hypermarket format has had a series of difficult economic years and its holding company Elo announced in July a net loss of almost a billion euros over the first six months of 2024.
In France, Auchan is the fifth distributor with just over 9% of the market, far from the leading trio E.Leclerc (24.1%), Carrefour (21.4%) and Mousquetaires/Intermarché (17.4%) and behind Coopérative U (12.2%), according to the Kantar institute. Recently, Auchan joined forces with its competitors Intermarché and Casino to pool purchases of foodstuffs then sold on the shelves of their stores, for an unusually long period of ten years.
This pooling has aroused concern among trade union organizations. Going through significant financial difficulties, the parent company of the northern distributor, Elo Groupe, had already announced last July “the average reduction of 25% of sales areas” of its hypermarkets.
