“If we could have made this plan in 2021, it would have been more moderate. » This word from the CEO of The voice of the North, Michel Nozière, has the merit of transparency. Scheduled from 2021 but postponed due to simultaneity with the so-called print modernization plan (PRIM), a wave of large-scale departures is emerging on a daily basis based in Lille (North). “We knew it was coming, but we didn’t think it would happen so quickly”drops a union representative.
A hundred positions (out of 600 according to the unions, 660 according to management) could be affected, including 70 in the editorial staff (which has 310 people). The intersyndicale (SNJ, SNJ-CGT, CFDT, Filpac-CGT and CFE-CGC), which published a press release on November 7 to denounce these projects, evokes “a social plan of unprecedented violence”.
“This plan does not exclude forced departures”
“In 2017, during the previous departure plan, 25% of the workforce was concernedexplains one of the union representatives (132 positions had been eliminated, against 178 announced). It was a big drain, but not commensurate with today because it was accompanied by an editorial project. This time, we are in a phase of destruction. » The number of editions, already reduced from twenty to seventeen in 2020 due to Covid-19 (and never restored thereafter), would be reduced to thirteen.
The Calais office, although the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, would be closed, the local pages shared with those of the other daily in the area, North Coast, also owned by the Belgian group Rossel – “an insult to the team in place and all the work done”, underlines the press release. Various services are destined to disappear (the “premedia” which had already almost been engulfed in 2017, the reservation center, and part of the general services) and “for the first time, this plan does not exclude forced departures” protests the inter-union. So many details that the CEO does not deny, but does not wish to detail, in order not to commit an offense of obstruction, before the social and economic committee (CSE) of December 13.
“We are on the bone”
Last stumbling block, if not complete rejection on the part of the intersyndicale: the project to create a ” Press Agency “ internal (as there is one at The Midi Dispatch, in Nimes). A way, she anticipates, of“outsource some of the editorial tasks”, and to hire future arrivals on lower terms. Seven positions could be created in the operation, without them being able to claim to compensate for the reductions in staff: “We are on the bone”summarizes a journalist. “These are pre-negotiations”insists Michel Nozière, without going any further.
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