In January 2000, the management of Moulinex, the French-owned domestic appliance manufacturer, announced a major new restructuring plan, involving the disposal of loss-making product lines and significant job losses. Trade unions have rejected the plan.
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In January 2000, the management of Moulinex, the French-owned domestic appliance manufacturer, announced a major new restructuring plan, involving the disposal of loss-making product lines and significant job losses. Trade unions have rejected the plan.
The management of the Moulinex group, the European leader in the small household appliance market, announced a major restructuring plan at the end of January 2000. The current plan is the successor to other large-scale restructuring plans launched by the corporation's managing director, Pierre Blayau, since 1996. Over the past few years, the firm's sites in France have been from 18 to nine, and staff numbers have been cut from 7,500 to 5,500. The group remains the largest private employer in the Basse-Normandie region, where Moulinex was set up in 1932. Aware of its key role in the region's labour market, the firm has managed to avoid making "uncushioned" redundancies in its earlier plans, ensuring that employees were switched to different positions within the company, and contributing to the revitalisation of abandoned sites. Staff have agreed to make a major effort in terms of mobility in order to retain their jobs.
For about 15 years, Moulinex, which specialises in small low-cost household appliances, has been making serious losses. Its financial problems and chronic debt problems have been exacerbated rather than diminished by a proactive growth strategy initiated at the beginning of the 1990s (with the take-over of Krups in Germany, Swan Housewares in the UK, and Girmi in Italy).
The new "industrial redeployment" plan provides for cessation of production of loss-making lines which account for a large proportion of the group's losses, and the loss of a total of around 2,000 jobs. Thus, manufacture of microwaves will be handed over to the US-based Whirlpool group, and vacuum cleaners to the Polish Zelner group. Moulinex will retain responsibility for the marketing and distribution of products that it will continue to sell under the Moulinex and Krups brand names. The group's management is preparing to enter into negotiations with the French government over the redevelopment of the two French sites affected by the plan. Production of Krups coffee machines in Solingen in Germany might be transferred to a factory in France after the closure of the German factory.
The workforce at Moulinex has a long average service and a high proportion of women and has been on the receiving end of a long series of restructuring plans. The prestige of the brand name and the company's economic importance for the region have given the French authorities cause for concern about the employment management measures implemented by the company.
Trade unions, with CGT in the majority at Moulinex, have united around the rejection of the new plan, demanding that all the factories are kept open and stating that it is financially viable for production with high added value to be developed in both traditional and new types of products. In response to the strategy of abandoning production in favour of concentrating on the design and marketing of Moulinex products, the unions are putting forward a plan for the restructuring of the household appliance industry in France and the rest of Europe, based on a series of joint ventures. General workforce assemblies are being held in all the company's workplaces, and Moulinex workers demonstrated in force on 19 February.
Eurofound recommends citing this publication in the following way.
Eurofound (2000), Further restructuring at Moulinex, article.
