Employee representatives from several group entities Auchan have been convened on Tuesday at 9 a.m. for CSE meetings in the Lille areafor an “update on the company’s situation and plans”. For their part, the unions fear bad news on the employment front. According to a source close to the matter, confirming information from La LettreSome 2,300 jobs are under threat in France.
According to this source, around 2,300 jobs could be at risk at various levels of the company, which employs around 54,000 people in France. Some of these jobs would be in support functions at the various head offices, while others would be at store level. According to The Letterthe plan would involve a large-scale voluntary redundancy scheme.
Auchan far behind the competition
Auchan Retail had already announced in September 2020 the loss of 1,475 jobs in France, following a voluntary redundancy plan for over 500 positions in January of the same year.
The pioneer of the hypermarket format is experiencing one difficult financial year after another. In July, its holding company Elo announced a net loss of almost one billion euros for the first six months of 2024. In 2023, Elo had reported a net loss of 379 million euros and sales down 1.7% to 32.9 billion euros, while inflation had boosted sales for most of its competitors.
In France, Auchan is the fifth-largest retailer, with just over 9% of the market, far from the leading quartet made up of E.Leclerc (24.1%), Carrefour (21.4%), Les Mousquetaires/Intermarché (17.4%) and Coopérative U (12.2%), according to the Kantar institute.
Auchan recently joined forces with its competitors Intermarché and Casino to pool purchases of foodstuffs subsequently sold in their stores, for an unusually long period of ten years. This mutualization has aroused the concern of trade unions, as has the announced objective of reducing the sales area of Auchan hypermarkets by around a third “in all its European countries”, i.e. “an average reduction of 25% in sales areas”.