Casino rescue plan: agreement with management, staff representatives withdraw their complaint

Common ground found. Casino staff representatives, who had appealed the distributor’s accelerated safeguard plan in March, withdrew on Wednesday after reaching full agreement with management, the inter-union indicated after a hearing at the Paris Court of Appeal.

Employee representatives believed that the accelerated backup plan drawn up by the former management of the distributor and its buyers led by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinksy did not offer enough compensation to employees. The agreement with the current management “proves us right in the fact that there was no social component in the initial plan”, reacted Didier Marion, spokesperson for the distributor’s inter-union association.

The group’s main orientations revealed Thursday

Formally, the Court of Appeal must still deliver its deliberations next week, after having taken note of the withdrawal of the employee representatives. In the meantime, the current management of the distributor did not wish to comment this Wednesday.

The new general manager Philippe Palazzi is due to unveil his main directions for the future of the distributor on Thursday at a press conference in Paris. Casino still had 200,000 employees worldwide at the end of 2022, including 50,000 in France. But he had grown in debt and, after having multiplied the sales, he had to restructure his debt in significant proportions.

The first shareholder and previous manager Jean-Charles Naouri then had to hand over, and let Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky and his allies take control of the group. In the meantime, Casino has sold most of its large format stores, its historic activity, to its competitors Auchan, Intermarché and Carrefour. The distributor today employs less than 30,000 people even before a social plan currently being discussed and which threatens around 3,000 jobs according to the unions.

It is refocused around smaller store brands, Monoprix, Franprix, Vival or Spar. Philippe Palazzi intends to make it a “champion of proximity” by developing franchise activity, a more profitable mode of store operation for distributors who then do not have to assume certain operating costs.