Some 200 employees of the LCL bank, a subsidiary of Crédit Agricole SA, gathered in Paris on Tuesday, while several branches were closed in France due to a strike for wage increases and better working conditions.
In total, 7% of LCL agencies are closed in France, out of a total of more than 1,700, the management told AFP, which “regrets this strike.” The reception of companies and professionals as well as private banks are not affected. In some regions, according to the unions, the strike rate reaches between 30% and 50% of the workforce.
The FO and CFDT unions, respectively the bank’s 2nd and 3rd union, had called on the employees to strike on Friday, denouncing in a press release “extreme greed”.
The two organizations were offended by management’s refusal to grant a headline raise for 2023 after the 2.9% average earned in July, well below inflation.
“Resignations are on the rise”
To this increase paid “as of July 2022” as an advance for 2023, “individual measures” of around 3.5% are added, LCL reacted, arguing an “average individual increase of 6.4%”. In addition, future bonuses “should be higher in 2023 than those paid in 2022” when they represented “more than two months of salary per employee.”
Among the demonstrators gathered in front of the historic LCL headquarters, Charline Joliveau, a CGT union representative, denounced increases “swallowed up” by inflation.
For its part, the Solidarity union otherwise, 4th formation, had called a strike at the beginning of the school year and also denounced, through the voice of its secretary Thierry Cornu, “working conditions” degraded by vacant positions and the ” commercial pressure”. The vacancies while “commercial targets are not revised downwards”, however, Ms. Gourdet abounded with AFP.
The SNB, the first LCL union not to be a member of the intersyndicale, invited employees “to express (their) discontent by participating in the social movement” and several employees wearing union bibs were present in Paris on Tuesday, a journalist from the LCL said. the AFP. . During the first nine months of 2022, LCL posted a net profit of €676 million, up 17.7% year-on-year.
Source: BFM TV
