Several dozen employees of the Decathlon sporting goods chain demonstrated outside several stores in France on Saturday to demand better wages, CFDT union representative Sébastien Chauvin told AFP.
“There is an operation to tow customers in front of the Herblay store”, in the Paris region, “in addition to a strike call at the beginning of the afternoon”, explained Mr. Chauvin.
The stores in Aubagne, Mérignac, Metz, Rennes or Lille are also affected, according to him. The day of the mobilization was not chosen at random, since it is the first Saturday of the winter sales, a day of great attendance.
“It is quite well perceived by customers,” says the union representative.
The CFDT calls for a fairer distribution of the company’s financial performance between shareholders and employees. The figure of 400 million euros in dividends paid last year advances.
The group has “significantly increased the salaries of its employees”
“We are asking for the systematic repercussion (of increases) of the SMIC” as well as an additional “gain of 3% in purchasing power”, underlines Mr. Chauvin.
The union launched a strike call on Thursday, following a mandatory annual bargaining (NAO) phase held in December.
The CFDT is not the majority within the sporting goods production and distribution group belonging to the Mulliez galaxy, such as Auchan, Boulanger or Leroy Merlin.
A meeting with management is scheduled for January 24, specifies Mr. Chauvin.
The group has “significantly increased the salaries of its employees” since January 2022, Decathlon announced in a statement received this Friday by AFP, “from 9% to 9.8% for university employees and supervisors.”
These figures mainly reflect the low level of wages in the company, replies Mr. Chauvin, who believes that the increase granted by the group brings them closer to the automatic revaluations of the minimum wage of last year, due to high inflation.
The group, created in 1976 in Englos (North), claims on its website about 94,000 employees. Decathlon already experienced a strike episode in October 2021, the first according to the unions at that time.
Source: BFM TV
