More than 2,000 express their concern about the deterioration of the commercial situation of Casino in Saint-Etienne, December 17, 2023 (AFP/OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE)
More than 2,000 people, employees, subcontractors, elected officials and residents of the region demonstrated on Sunday in Saint-Etienne at the call of the Casino inter-union, to defend jobs and express their attachment to the emblematic brand of their city, in great financial difficulty.
The procession gathered near the imposing headquarters of Casino, a long glass liner located opposite the city’s TGV station, set off at the end of the morning under a blue sky and a winter sun, at 2° on the thermometer. Direction: the Loire prefecture, for a one-hour march at the call of the inter-union FO, CGT, CFDT, UNSA and CFE-CGC.
“We live by and for Casino. It risks being a disaster,” fears Thierry Renaud, forty-year-old boss of a printing company that has been 80% dependent on the mass distribution group for more than three decades. “Everything has stopped, we no longer have any orders,” he notes, while the city has been experiencing a slow economic hemorrhage for forty years.
The unions called on Casino employees, subcontractors, “the population attached to the brand” and “the players and supporters of AS Saint-Etienne” to mobilize.
The football club, which was called the “Casino Sports Association” at its birth, now plays in league 2, far from the glory years of the Greens. The Geoffreoy-Guichard stadium is named after the founder of Casino.
“Many people from my family worked there, I am a customer,” explains Véronique Molinski, a demonstrator in her sixties who came to show her solidarity, her neck protected with a green scarf, in the colors of the team. Stéphanoise.
“Today, we are expecting politicians, athletes, ordinary people, from the Saint-Etienne region and beyond,” said CGT union delegate and spokesperson for the inter-union Jean Pastor on Sunday morning on RMC. The prefecture estimated the procession at more than 2,000 people at the end of the morning.
Many local elected officials joined the parade. “Many employees live in the Forez plain (located in the heart of the department), we do not yet measure the big impact that this will have on our municipalities,” laments the deputy of the neighboring village of Saint-Cyprien.
For months, the company’s unions have been trying to mobilize to avoid “a new Manufrance”. The liquidation of the mail order company in 1985 – almost a hundred years after its creation – left a bitter memory locally, as did the closure by the State of its military arms factory a decade later.
© 2023 AFP
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