The restructuring of the Casino group has favoured local brands to the detriment of department stores, which have gradually been given over to competing brands. The demand not to sell the group “in pieces” has not held up, according to the former spokesperson for the inter-union.
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At the end of March 2024, Jean-Charles Naouri, former CEO of the Casino group, officially handed over his place to billionaire Daniel Kretinsky. A few months later, thousands of positions remain in the hot seat, following the group’s restructuring plan. While its Monoprix and Franprix brands are holding up, most of Casino’s hypermarkets and supermarkets have been sold to competitors Auchan, Intermarché and Carrefour.
The former spokesperson for the Casino group’s inter-union, Jean Pastor, embodied the employees’ struggle against the dismantling of the group, so that Casino could be resold. “as a group and not as pieces.”
“They said they were going to take social support measures, but as they were told, the damage has already been done. Personally, I am disgusted.”deplored Jean Pastor, on December 7, 2023, when he was a CGT Casino delegate and spokesperson for the Intersyndicale. The group being in debt and in great difficulty, the intersyndicale was received by the management and the future buyers, to discuss the employment of 25,000 employees and the future of the head office in Saint-Étienne.
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The now former CGT union representative looks back on these long months of mobilisation, which began in the autumn: “On November 17, 2023, we all called each other, the union organizations, he remembers. We all understood that something was happening.” So it was necessary to organize on a larger scale and he was appointed spokesperson, putting him in the media spotlight.
“If I tell you that at the height of the affair, I was answering almost 75 phone calls a day, I think that’s at the very least!”
Jean Pastor, former CGT Casino delegateto franceinfo
This struggle weighed on the decisions that were taken, he believes, but it did not prevent the dismantling of department stores: “It’s true that we had a very enriching time, but at the same time, it was the swan song”he sums up sadly. Of the 288 Casinos in France, 54 stores in Bouches-du-Rhône and Var will change their name by September.