It has been almost two months since the tension has been rising to The mountain. An anger that rumbles particularly within the printing press of Morel-Ladeuil, in Clermont-Ferrand, one of the two printing centers of the press group Center France. Rotativists from the Clermont newspaper have gone on strike or walked off the job on several occasions since mid-January to demonstrate against working conditions and remuneration that they consider unsatisfactory, as well as to express their fears stemming from the construction of a new printing plant in 2024.
four numbers of The mountain have not left the presses since Thursday January 19, as well as several newspapers of the group printed on the same site as The People of the Center, Republican Berry, The Awakening of Haute-Loire. Three representatives of the Filpac-CGT union – majority at the Morel-Ladeuil printing works – and one from FO were received by the deputy management and the heads of the printing works on Tuesday, February 28, to demand payment for the days of the strike and an increase in wages at the printing plant. Judging that this meeting had not allowed any progress, the rotativists made a new stoppage in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, which made it impossible to print the edition of the Clermont metropolis for the third time.
Discussions on the Mandatory Annual Negotiations (NAO) 2022 have not helped ease tensions. The management of Center France refused a general salary increase for its 1,850 employees, highlighting the fragility of the economic model of the press in an inflationary context. Like other regional daily press titles in 2022, the group present in fifteen departments suffered from the explosion in the cost of newsprint and production costs (energy, inks, distribution, etc.). A moment that is all the more delicate as the economic model of the eight daily titles and the nine weeklies remains highly dependent on the printed newspaper, which is selling less and less well. Today, around 85% of the Center France group’s turnover would come from the printed edition, while only 15% would come from subscribers to the digital version.
Triggering of an alert right
Despite this difficult context, the group is preparing to close its 2022 accounts at the end of March with a slight profit, but the management has warned the unions of the “risk of a financial year in deficit in 2023”. Worried about the management of the company’s accounts, the CSE of The mountain and several other entities of the group have triggered a right of alert in order to find out more.
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