Credit Agricole must be loyal to its employees
The extraordinary meeting of 09 February 2012
The special committee (bureau of the European Council) is deeply concerned about the announcements of branch closures and redundancies, which are going to result in job losses for many of our colleagues.
The role of the EEC is to deliver an opinion on the matter.
The closures envisaged in Europe are a bad signal for the projects of the Crédit Agricole Group, at a time when your objective is to acquire a European dimension. You could have avoided these closures, as the amounts you will be able to recover are insignificant in relation to the €18 billion you are seeking.
The closures are also an inapt move for Crédit Agricole’s image.
We are asking you to reverse your closure decisions.
Also, with whom are you going to negotiate? There are no trade union reps in Hungary, the Czech Republic, or Slovakia - or indeed in the UK!
How will the employees be heard, except here in the European Employee Council?
How do you intend to treat the staff?
We appeal to Crédit Agricole’s sense of responsibility: behind the rows of numbers, there are human beings. Are you aware of the unemployment benefits in those three countries, where, in addition to having low severance payments, there is almost no social buffer?
Crédit Agricole is not an ordinary capitalist bank; it is a mutualist institution and it must show that in its deeds and with concrete evidence, also in the light of its Group project.
We are asking you to redo your calculations. And if ultimately it is still necessary to terminate activities, then you should offer new jobs within the Group, support retraining and redeployment, grant a decent indemnity to each employee, as recognition of the loyalty of those workers who, having worked at Crédit Agricole for many years, are to lose their jobs for no fault of their own.
We are therefore calling for the implementation of an indemnity system with a high a base level, common to all, and with seniority-based progression.
This system should obviously not be based solely on the legal requirements, because, parallel to those, there are bonuses of several million Euros.
Martina DIMITROVSKA: in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, where respectively 16 and 85 jobs are to be cut, the two branches operate together under the same director.
"People are shocked, disappointed, especially as the bank's profitability is not at issue. Since the announcement was made two months ago, just before Christmas, we haven’t heard anything more. People are confused because no redundancy plan has been prepared. Management has simply asked people to stay on to complete the shutdown and thereby receive more than the statutory redundancy pay. We have shown our loyalty for 20 years; now we hope we’ll get fair treatment.”
Andras TASNADI: in Hungary, "59 of us are affected and the average seniority is 9 years. We felt great emotion at the announcement – we were dumbfounded.
We still don’t see the reason for the decision, and its sense.
For the 20 years that Crédit Agricole CIB (Corporate and Investment Banking) has been established in Hungary, it has always been profitable. We have never had to set aside provisions for asset impairment, and our OPEX amounts to only 33%, half the percentage in France. At the end of 2011, our consumption of weighted assets (€ 293m) and liquidity (€180m) was marginal on a Group-wide scale. Moreover, we serviced CA-CIB’s strategic customers (e.g., the local subsidiaries of the large CAC40 groups).
Above all, we hope the Group mitigates the social impact. We are appealing to the Group’s solidarity values, and we hope that the painful breakup goes through in the best possible conditions. There is no social protection in Hungary, the duration of unemployment benefit has declined from nine to three months, and it amounts to a maximum of only €190 per month. The average time it takes to find a new job is 17 months.”
Derek FACER: in the United Kingdom, “the back office is to be transferred from London to Paris. That would affect +/- 145 employees. The decision has not yet been announced, but those concerned have been notified. The reasons for the decision are unclear.
The dismissals have not yet been officially announced; nor have the possible financial compensations. Possibly moving to France would be difficult because most of these colleagues speak English only.
The employees are being presented with a done deal, and feelings of frustration and sadness predominate.
The statutory indemnities amount to an average of one week's pay per year of service.
The internal redeployment track will be explored, but not everyone will be placed in another job.”
Crédit Agricole must be loyal to its employees.
On behalf of the European Employee Council:
Pascal FESQUET (France), Jean-Paul DEBRUXELLES (Belgium), Vasileios CHAIRETIS (Greece), Alain MORET (France), Cédric MOUTIER (France), Quintin PASTOR (Spain), Matteo SALSI (Italy), Christophe BOUR (Luxembourg).
Yveta BRAVENCOVA (CA-CIB Czech Republic), Martina DIMITROVSKA (CA-CIB Slovakia)
Andras TASNADI (CA-CIB Hungary), Derek FACER (CA-CIB United Kingdom)
Consultancy unit for the European Council: (Lionel GIRARD, Stéphane PORTET)