After four days of non-publication due to the editorial strike, the regional daily Provence must return to newsstands on Tuesday, at least temporarily. The editorial staff, meeting Monday, November 20 in a general assembly, voted to suspend the strike started Thursday to protest against the elimination of 30 journalists’ positions, announced the majority National Union of Journalists (SNJ).
“The suspension of the movement was voted for by 51% of voters”, Sophie Manelli, elected from the SNJ on the Social and Economic Committee (CSE), told Agence France-Presse. This narrow majority shows that “the editorial staff remains very mobilized against these intolerable job cuts”she added.
She declared that Provence would be back on newsstands on Tuesday after four days of non-appearance, which was also confirmed by management.
Non-renewal of fixed-term contract
During the general assembly, the inter-union presented to the staff “the progress made”namely a “staggering of the departure schedule which will extend until the end of 2024”, “the rapid tenure of around thirty fixed-term contracts” (fixed-term contracts), as well as “negotiations on the reorganization of the editorial staff in consultation with department heads and unions”.
On Wednesday, the group’s general manager Provencetaken over in September 2022 by the maritime transport specialist CMA-CGM, announced the elimination of 30 editorial positions, reduced from 185 to 155 journalists, citing an operating loss of 12.5 million euros in 2022.
Gabriel d’Harcourt then affirmed that the editorial staff had not changed since 2018, while at the same time the newspaper lost more than 25,000 copies sold on an average day (from 92,000 to 65,000).
The 30 job cuts within the editorial staff, which will result in non-renewal of fixed-term contracts, represent half of the workforce reductions requested by the new shareholder, i.e. 61 jobs in total out of the 610 in the newspaper, all professions combined.
Since September 2022, 64 journalists from Provencepreviously owned by the Bernard Tapie group (in liquidation), have requested to benefit from the transfer clause, a system allowing a media outlet to be left with compensation during a change of ownership.