Carrefour employees on strike across France

Across France, employees of the Carrefour group are mobilized this Saturday, in particular to demand wage increases and hiring. Access to some stores has been prevented.

The employees of the Carrefour group mobilized on Saturday throughout France, with strikes or demonstrations at the call of the CFDT and the CGT, two non-majority unions, to denounce a “social confinement”, poor working conditions, and demand hirings and wage increases.

In Liévin (Pas-de-Calais), the employees led a “strike, with impactful filtering”, indicated Philippe Hureau, CFDT delegate, who criticized “the lack of personnel in the store”. “We are not given the means to satisfy customers. There is a lot of waiting at the checkout,” he explained.

In front of the largest Carrefour in Marseille, in the northern districts, customers were stranded for more than a kilometer on Saturday morning, in a concert of horns, with the entrance to the car park hampered by carts lying on the ground and an organized filtering dam by the strikers. “The store continues to run, but we try to dissuade customers as much as possible,” said Fiona Agueni, student and cashier at the store.

“The management despises us”

In Val-de-Marne, three stores followed suit, in Ivry-sur-Seine, Villejuif and Charenton-le-Pont, while remaining open, according to the prefecture. “Carrefour will pay 400 million euros to its shareholders, and only 200 euros gross (bonus) to its employees. This is unacceptable, especially in the conditions in which we work”, with “aggressive customers”, protested Betty, CFDT union delegate in Ivry-sur-Seine.

“The management despises us,” protested his colleague Stéphane Desgranges, representing CGT. “We have been open for a year, we fed people …”, he recalled. “Today, (…) we leave the store open (…) but if the management does not hear us, we will take the next step,” he warned.

In Seine-Saint-Denis, two stores were mobilized, in Noisy-le-Grand and Aulnay-sous-Bois, “without consequences on the reception of customers”, according to the prefecture. In Etampes, according to the prefecture of Essonne, around forty employees gathered in the morning in a “calm and serene” atmosphere in the store parking lot.

The movement was also followed in Givors (Rhône), where the store was closed Saturday morning due to a strike. In Dijon, a hundred demonstrators gathered at the call of the CFDT in front of a shopping center and in Quetigny, in the Dijon suburbs, the strike was followed at 50%, according to the CGT, cited by Le Bien Public.

In Annecy, employees of the Carrefour hypermarket “demonstrated in front of the store”, according to the local CGT, and in Nice, two hypermarkets were affected by the movement, which won Monaco, where 70 of the 280 employees of the Carrefour hypermarket were on strike, according to Alexandra Oukdim, delegate of the Trade Union of Monaco.

Carrefour defends itself against the accusations

According to management, there were 2,000 strikers out of 85,000 employees. At BFM Business, Carrefour recalls that it was the first to pay a bonus of 1,000 euros last year to all of its 85,000 employees in stores, warehouses and driveways.

“This year, we signed two major wage agreements on the hypermarket and supermarket formats on March 23, signed by FO [le syndicat majoritaire] which provides for wage increases of 1.2% in supermarkets and 0.9% in hypermarkets. In addition to this 0.9%, there is a commitment bonus of 200 euros, ”explains Carrefour to BFM Business.

The group adds that in 2021, the amounts of profit-sharing and participation “are the highest for 10 years”. “In stores, it represents 1200 euros on average for store employees, or 200 euros more than last year,” says the sign.

“If you put end to end the impact of this salary negotiation by taking into account the salary increase, the bonus and the amounts of profit-sharing and profit-sharing, it is obvious that Carrefour has endeavored to recognize the contribution of its employees to the results of the group “, defends Carrefour.