Restructuring events
European Restructuring Monitor (ERM)
The restructuring events database contains factsheets with data on large-scale restructuring events reported in the principal national media and company websites in each EU Member State. This database was created in 2002.
The management of SCA, a manufacturer sanitary paper products including kitchen towels and toilet paper, have announced a restructuring plan involving 214 job cuts. The cuts include 134 employees at its plant in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray (Seine-Maritime) from a total workforce of 268 employees, and 80 employees at its plant in Hondouville (Calvados) from a total workforce of 320. In response, the unions organised a 24 hour strike on the 11th of May at both sites to denounce this restructuring. They also aim to put pressure on management throughout the negotiation process. The union, CFDT, explained that the management refused to consider alternative measures to dismissals. The management said it has to reorganise the plants in order to maintain the groups’ competitiveness. The Hondouville site is experiencing the backlash of the crisis faced by some of their major customers, including public authorities, who increasingly look to reduce prices at tender, while the plant of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray has seen its production for the large retailers network decrease by about 30% since 2012. However a union representative has stressed that the decrease in activity at the sites is part of an organised effort from the group to reduce costs by allocating greater volumes of production to plants in other countries. Unions have denounced the plan given that the group reached a profit of 1.15 billion in 2014, the highest operating profit in its history, which continued to rise in 2015. SCA has undergone restructuring in France in the past, with 280 job cuts in 2010, 162 in 2013, and 119 in 2015. According to the unions, the group has destroyed over 2,000 positions the last twenty years.
Update 24-11-2016: in the framework of the restructuring, the management has announced the sale of its kitchen towel manufacture plant, which employs 60 people, to the company Sodipan Table, a subsidiary of the group Nappage. This take over will save 60 jobs.
Eurofound (2016), SCA, Internal restructuring in France, factsheet number 87480, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://dev.eurofound.europa.eu/restructuring-events/detail/87480.
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