Tensions as cash-strapped Socialist Party plans to shed more than half its staff

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The Socialist Party performed miserably in the French presidential elections and poorly in the subsequent Parliamentary elections, and is  so short of money it is selling off its party headquarters at rue de Solférino in Paris. It has now also just announced a redundancy plan which will see the number of staff it employs in Paris cut from 97 to just 38 by the spring of 2018. Employees, meanwhile, are complaining about the likely redundancy terms. Christophe Gueugneau reports.

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On the evening of October 24th the former first secretary of the Socialist Party, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, spoke on French television station Canal Plus about why the party was selling off its headquarters in rue de Solférino in Paris. “By selling Solférino, not only will we have a very high level redundancy scheme, a very good one for all staff, we will have the resources to rebuild,” he said. “Apart from [President] Emmanuel Macron's party [editor's note, La République en Marche], which has had a financial windfall, every party, and I indeed mean every party, is indebted, not [just] the Socialist Party.'

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