SFR sale employee strike, Digi Mart USA News (Paris, France): Several hundred employees of SFR and Altice France gathered Tuesday morning outside the group’s headquarters in southwestern Paris, called to strike to press for guarantees on their conditions of reemployment as the operator prepares to be sold to its competitors. According to the Unsa union, about 6,500 employees of the group were on strike at midday.
“There is this buyout project, and today we are not informed about what follows […] Unfortunately, we do not know precisely what will happen to us,” said Laure, an employee with SFR for 15 years who did not wish to give her last name. Among the workers gathered outside the Altice France headquarters, several wore T-shirts reading “SFR c’est nous,” the slogan of the mobilization.
After a first half-day strike in late September, the intersyndical body formed by Unsa, the CFDT and the CFTC this time called on all employees of the operator, its stores and its technical subsidiaries (ATS) to stop work for the entire day. “What we are asking for is a real redeployment policy, offering three positions for each employee,” said Abdelkader Choukrane, general secretary of Unsa and central union delegate of SFR.
Following the memorandum of understanding for the sale of the operator for 20.35 billion euros between Altice France and Bouygues Telecom, Iliad (Free) and Orange, unions entered talks with the consortium of the three buyers to discuss the future of employees. According to several staff representatives, they received on Saturday a proposal, the first put in writing, reflecting points raised in meetings held since the start of the summer.
However, unions are not satisfied. In addition to the three reemployment proposals per employee, they demand higher severance payments in case of departure.
“This is not at all at the level of these three companies, which could truly commit more resources,” said Olivier Lelong, central CFDT union delegate.
Staff representatives also demand that Altice France management open negotiations on the future of the technical subsidiaries’ teams, which are excluded from the scope of the sale and several of whose employees were present Tuesday morning. “We would have liked them to tell us whether we will really have a job at the end,” said Sandrine, an employee for 12 years at one of these subsidiaries, who also did not wish to give her last name.
