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.
British multinational Imperial Tobacco group announced a restructuring plan affecting its last two sites in France with a reduction of 326 jobs. The reorganisation leads to the closure of the last tobacco manufacture in France (excepted a very small plant in Corsica) at Riom (Puy-de-Dôme) and of its R&D centre of Fleury-les-Aubrais (Loiret). The reorganisation will begin in the second semester of 2017; following the closure of the information and consultation process that will officially start in March 2017. Until then, the management will look for companies able to take over the sites and to offer new job to the dismissed workers. The group explains that its decision depends on a drop in tobacco products sales of about 44% between 2002 and 2015, due to new restrictive legislation. Its turnover in France has decreased by 24% between 2013 and 2016, which represents a loss of €227 million. The production of Riom will be transferred to Poland and Germany. In 2014, the company has closed its Carquefou plant (Loire-Atlantique) with the loss of 320 jobs and moved the production activities to Poland, in a framework of a European cost-cutting plan due to overcapacity and declined turnover.
Update 23/05/2017: Workers at the cigarette factory have gone on strike to influence the severance pay negotiations scheduled to take place in Paris on 23 May. The discussions between the management and the inter-union representing the employees of the factory are part of the employment safeguarding redundancy plan that affects all of the site's 239 employees who will be dismissed; the deadline is 7 July 2017. The employees want to take over the factory as a cooperative (Scop) and keep five production lines. They claim that under this proposal, employees who are under ten years away from retirement would be able to keep their job. The business plan has been validated by a consulting firm, although a symbolic price would need to be negotiated instead of the € 8.10 million that the company is demanding.
Eurofound (2016), Seita, Relocation in France, factsheet number 89288, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://dev.eurofound.europa.eu/restructuring-events/detail/89288.
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