Placed in compulsory liquidation on Friday January 13, the company Place du Marché, ex-Toupargel, laid off its 1,900 employees. In Montauban where the company had a site, around sixty employees lost their jobs. Considering themselves aggrieved, they have been occupying the premises of their former company since Tuesday afternoon in order to secure the remaining goods. They hope to be able to negotiate better severance pay.
Mardi, after the demonstration against the pension reform projectthe employees of the Place du Marché company (ex-Toupargel) have taken the path of their former work. Under the scope of a dismissal procedure following the judicial liquidation of their companypronounced in mid-January, employees have been waiting to learn more.
Tired of waiting, about fifty of them decided to act by taking control of the former Montalban site. “We arrived at the beginning of the afternoon, there were still three employees working. They are the only ones left, the others, we were all fired, recalls one of the ex-employees. a little scared because there were many of us but we came back calmly. We’re not going to steal or break anything, it’s our business, he says. All we want is to express ourselves. We want to be heard,” he said.
Because since the pronunciation of the judgment, the teams of Place du Marché have the feeling of not being heard and especially of being wronged.
“In 2 months, it was very fast, we were made redundant. The bosses (Editor’s note: Léo and Patrick Bahadourian) collected aid of 30 or 35 million euros when they bought 3 years ago, and after , they fired us”, summarizes one of the demonstrators. Another agrees: “We were pawns. They asked us to give our all and in the end, we gave everything and they nothing. That’s how they thank us!”.
If the mood is good within the group, we feel that resentment is great. Another adds: “They had already planned everything when they bought us, it disgusts me, I am sickened”. “We trusted them and they took us for pigeons,” added a fourth.
The owners of the company live in the Lyon region.
An action supported by CGT 82
“The employees have decided to fight. They don’t want to leave with nothing,” says Sébastien Turon, deputy secretary general of the CGT departmental union. Or at least, “not leave with the only legal compensation”, provided for by the judicial liquidation. “There is still at least a million euros worth of merchandise in the premises, and they are there to put it in safety. So that it does not get sold and the money still comes back into the pockets of the shareholders”, he pleads.
Employees hope to open a dialogue with management so that it offers them jobs in companies in the sector. Their former bosses are indeed also the owners of the Grand Frais stores. In the absence of a job offer, the dismissed hope to have supralegal redundancy bonuses. “We are asking €2,000 per year of seniority and one year’s salary”, for each employee, reveals one of the occupants.
The two other deposits of the company (in Chalon and Argentan) were also blocked by the employees of the company assure the Montalbanais. Determined, the group intends to stay there for several days. And the employees have already organized themselves to take turns day and night in order to occupy the site, “as long as it takes”, they promise. “It took us a long time to wake up but now we won’t let go.”
THE CGT supports the action of the dismissed employees.
