In Villeneuve-Sur-Lot, where Philippe Ginestet opened his first store in 1981, many employees “cannot imagine a life without Gifi” and expect the imminent final of negotiations on the modalities of the social plan announced in spring.
More than half of the job cuts planned in the Employment Safeguard Plan (PSE) refer to the Bazaar brand headquarters, the first private employer of the Lot-Egaronne sub-prefecture (22,000 inhabitants).
The group wants to reduce its workforce by 5% of the total of 6,000 people in France, eliminating 186 positions of 730 at the headquarters and 116 in 11 stores dedicated to closing.
As the approach of the date, next Friday, for the conclusion of the agreement on this pse, the silence reigns, especially because the employees received the instructions not to speak with the journalists. The risk is too great to “lose everything,” said one of them on anonymity.
The failed computer switch
Another 50 -year -old employee, more than 10 years old, says he is “disgusted” of disorganization in the group. “I was thinking of finishing my career in Gifi, but now she’s fed up,” she says, “ready to work in temporary workers.”
“Or people change towards much more difficult statements, or prefer to be resigned,” says Laurent Mardaga, CFDT chose, the majority union, for whom “the concern has been there for months.”
This change in the computer system, in addition to the competition of other stores (Action, Maxibazar) or Internet platforms such as Temu, caused the first losses of the group for two years.
“An already affected valley”
After an understanding of his debt last year, Gifi snatched a financial support plan in January, with a new government and the background of the brand’s founder, Philippe Ginestet.
These difficulties concern all the agglomeration of Villeneuve, weakened and without a coastline, without a road and where the station has become a Labor Agency in France.
“I see that the city changed with a decline in the center, it will be added,” Frédéric Mallet fears, a pharmacist. “People will leave and the works will not be replaced, the Lot Valley is already affected,” with the closure in 2018 of the Fumel neighboring foundry, which used up to 3,500 employees.
“People are worried, they feel and many Gifi subcontractors are in trouble,” said Alex Jounel, director of a Café-Restaurant, who has lost the rotation with the departure of the group’s executives.
Source: BFM TV
