Their restaurant is due to close its doors for good on August 7th and they have resolved to do all they can to stop it. The 70 staff at the Saint-Barthélemy McDonald's branch in the north of Marseille are in the middle of a conflict with their current owners who are proposing to sell the business to a mysterious buyer. The employees do not believe the new plans for the restaurant are serious proposals. Instead they believe that the closure of this 'McDo' outlet is a ruse, and stems from a desire to get rid of a restaurant whose unionised staff have been behind some high-profile industrial campaigns and actions, both at local and national level. In a bid to halt the move the staff, backed by an inter-union group, have deposed an official complaint against the owners with the prosecutor in the Mediterranean coastal city for attempted fraud.
“As far as we're concerned it's a fraudulent set-up, whose aim is to remove this restaurant from the McDonald's orbit at any cost,” says the employees' lawyer Ralph Blindauer, a specialist in industrial action and employment cases. The fraud complaint is not the only legal action the staff are taking. On July 30th the lawyer was at the High Court in Marseille seeking to get an extension to the obligatory consultations the owners have to conduct with the restaurant's works committee. And on August 20th the lawyer will apply to the same court to have the entire sale process annulled. Meanwhile Ralph Blindauer has also applied to an industrial tribunal in a bid to stop the staff being transferred from their current company to the new one.
The staff themselves are stepping up their action. On Saturday July 21st they invited the leader of the radical left La France Insoumise ('France Unbowed') party and Marseille MP Jean-Luc Mélenchon to protest with them. The local Senator Samia Ghali has also made clear her support. In a letter she called for the legal system to “take the side of the employees whose only concern is to save their workplace, their income and household stability”.
The restaurant currently belongs to a group of six McDonald's outlets in Marseille and nearby Vitrolles, of which 50% is owned by McDonald's France 50% by the person who manages them on a day-to-day basis, franchisee Jean-Pierre Brochiero. Several years ago he was the director of human resources for McDonald's in the Paris region. It was on May 7th this year that Brochiero announced to staff representatives that he was going to sell all his restaurants, which he has run since January 2015.
Five of the restaurants and their 300 or so staff will be sold to another Marseilles McDonald's franchisee, Mohamed Abassi. But the one at Saint-Barthélemy, which has recorded losses of between 480,000 and 890,000 euros a year since 2013, will be sold to another buyer and is due to become an Asian halal restaurant, according to documents sent to employees. But just a few days before the official transfer deadline they know little more than that about their future.
“I was committed to finding a buyer who had a well-founded plan and had the best guarantees for employment, as the restaurant is planning to employ 70 staff from its opening,” said Jean-Pierre Brochiero when questioned by Mediapart. The company said in a press release: “This proposed sale, inside the McDonald's network and outside, offers the best possible guarantees for preserving jobs in the six restaurants. An unfailing commitment which Mr Brochiero has shown from the start.”
But such statements infuriate staff representatives at the Saint-Barthélemy outlet. “McDonald's doesn't accept responsibility for wanting to close that restaurant, and are completely distancing themselves from the future buyer's redundancy plans,” these representatives told Mediapart. Christophe Lomonaco, from the CFE-CGC union, says that the proposed sale is a “sham”. Despite having lengthy meetings with their current boss on the 12th, 22nd, and 28th of June and the 2nd of July, staff feel they have received few concrete details from management about their future. However, Jean-Pierre Brochiero insists: “In the last three months staff representatives have asked 383 questions about the proposed sale to buyers. They have got 383 detailed replies.”
But Christophe Lomonaco says: “The supposed buyers have not deigned to reply to the invitation from the [works council] to explain their plans. There's no trace in France of the company that's supposed to be buying us, Hali Food & Co.” The only reference that management has been able to give staff is an entry on the companies register in Tunisia, dating from March 2018. “We're told that the company will be created in France when the project is finalised but in truth the responses that have been given to us have changed depending on the questions,” says Christophe Lomonaco.
“The cancellation of the management-rental contract with McDonald's is supposed to take place on August 7th, and the works are supposed to go on for two months to transform the restaurant, but to our knowledge no planning application has been made and no request for short-time working has been lodged,” says Kamel Guemari, the staff representative from the FO trade union and one of the key figures in actions and protests at McDonald's branches in Marseille. The current owners said that an application for building work was imminent.
There is even uncertainty over the exact identity of the new company's owners. Several different names have been flagged up in documents that have been supplied, without saying clearly who the buyer is. These documents, which involve a market study and an outline of the new plans, are also thin on other detail.
From reading the file of 40 or so pages, largely consisting of information about the “Muslim community and halal consumption in France”, the staff have simply learnt that the new owners want the new restaurant to be “in the listings of great 'in', chic Asian halal restaurants”. And that the new management wants it to be a “pretty place characterised by quality of life as well as the diversity of cultures, religions in the Mediterranean”.
The market study concludes, optimistically: “Hali Food & Co will position it as a restaurant that is 100% halal, innovative and which will be visited by the majority of the Muslim community in Marseille.” Both the buyers and the current management refer to another halal Asian restaurant in the Plan de Campagne shopping zone north of Marseille which they say “works very well”. Union representative Kamel Guemari says: “But this restaurant is nothing like us, it employs around ten people at most and is not run by the company which is supposed to be buying us.”
Jean-Pierre Brochiero insists, however, that the “Hali Food project is a strong one” and that the business plan makes provision for an “investment of 500,000 euros”.
Losses of 3.3 million euros since 2009
As far as staff representatives are concerned, the sale of the existing business is a transparent ploy. They believe it is really about McDonald's passing on to the mystery buyer the responsibility for closing the restaurant, thereby relieving themselves of their obligations. “At the least a redundancy package ..will cost several million euros (probably between 5 and 10 million euros),” says the official complaint deposed by employees on July 19th.
But such claims are brushed aside by both the company and the franchise holder Jean-Pierre Brochiero. He insists he has taken care to “carry out this procedure in an irreproachable legal framework” and to “present the plan in the context of the social dialogue underway”.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
It is true that the recurring and major losses suffered by the restaurant give McDonald's a strong argument for closing it. “The sale of this restaurant, to an external entrepreneur, is based solely on tangible economics because, despite investments and time allowed to try to reverse the trend, the restaurant has seen chronic losses,” says Jean-Pierre Brochiero, who cites a figure of 3.3 million euros in losses since 2009.
But the unions insist that a large portion of these losses is due to the major work being carried out on the L2 ring road which has been under construction for several years right next to the Saint-Barthélemy restaurant. That has led to lanes being blocked, the closure of the drive-in section of the restaurant and the closure of some parking. They also point out that McDonald's France was compensated for this disruption by the construction company Bouygues who carried out the work.
Jean-Pierre Brochiero confirms that “like all the businesses impacted, McDonald's received compensation payment as partial recompense for the 30% reduction in the restaurant's activity during the works”. The unions themselves talk of sums of several million euros being paid to compensate for the loss of trade in recent years. But Mediapart understands that the amount paid over was no more than 400,000 euros for a year in which the restaurant losses were above that figure.
Whatever the true sums involved, as far as the staff are concerned the fast-food chain's goal is to get rid of a site that is “emblematic of the social struggle in Marseille”. For the branch at Saint-Barthélemy is not just any McDonald's restaurant. The staff there have been employed for many years, up to 20 years in some cases, and benefit from some significant workplace advantages. These include an annual bonus payment, quarterly bonuses and nearly all of their healthcare insurance being paid by the company. “They also have union officials who do their job and are not afraid to go for it, which is quite rare in that world,” says their lawyer Ralph Blindauer.
Raphaël Million, of the Solidaires trade union and a regular supporter of McDonald's workers in Paris, agrees about the solidarity shown by the Marseille restaurant's staff. “They are very active and have been united for many years, they've succeeded in [creating] an exceptional inter-union coalition,” he says. “That's enabled them to win some impressive rights, considerably superior to those that exist in other McDonald's.”
At company level the Marseille activists have become a symbol, and were present for example during the occupation of a McDonald's near the Gare de l'Est railway station in Paris in May this year. In Marseille itself the staff have carried out actions and protests for many years, for example conducting strikes and stopping work during the busy period of midday or the evening, in order to get what they consider to be decent working conditions. In fact, the tensions have not gone away since Jean-Pierre Brochiero bought his six franchises from the long-time franchisee Franceso Brescia, who sold all of his 17 franchises in the Marseille area in 2015.
One reason why the staff are so determined in their actions is that they know what the restaurant means to the local area. It is situated in the heart of the northern dsitrict of Marseille and for more than 20 years it has been one of the most secure sources of employment in the area. “Here this work isn't a small seasonal or student job, but very often the only means for some fathers and mothers to feed their children,” says Kamel Guemari. That is one reason why staff tend to stay at the restaurant for many years.
The staff representatives are also worried about the five McDonald's restaurants from the same franchisee that will remain open. These will all be transferred to the control of Mohamed Abassi, who already runs eight other McDonald's in Marseille. Yet he does not have a great reputation in the world of fast food. In May this year several staff gathered to protest against his business methods. Having taken over one restaurant he is said to have got rid of two managers even though they had been there for 25 years. The employees also said that there were security staff in the restaurant when it was taken over, which they interpreted as a warning to staff not to get too militant. Staff have also spoken of attempts to limit the workplace benefits that employees already enjoyed.
Mohamed Abassi did not respond to Mediapart's questions. A discreet figure, he has only publicly commented once recently, when he told La Provence newspaper that he wanted to “keep everyone's jobs, including union representatives” and he insisted that there was a good social dialogue in his restaurants.
The workplace atmosphere at McDonald's restaurants in Marseille is tense and there are accusations of intimidation on both sides. Some elected staff representatives say they have been subjected to pressure. Christophe Lomonaco, the representative for the CFE-CGC union, has lodged formal complaints twice since May over threats he says he has received. On the other side, Jean-Pierre Brochiero says that “several franchisees in Marseille and the owner of Hali Food have received physical threats and threats over the phone which have been the subject of several complaints since the start of the process”.
The owner of eight other McDonald's franchises in the region, Serge Melniczuk, has already complained in La Provence of the “blackmailing” attitude of some trade unionists. He claimed that another restaurant owner was facing “extortion”. The latest complaints being lodged by the staff at the Saint-Barthélemy restaurant and the series of court hearings planned over the weeks ahead will do little to ease the tension.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter