La Samaritaine, a Parisian department store with iconic status, closed for an unspecified period in June 2005. Safety work being carried out is said to make it impossible for the store to re-open in less than 6 years. Its 1,500 workers have been left in limbo.
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La Samaritaine, a Parisian department store with iconic status, closed for an unspecified period in June 2005. Safety work being carried out is said to make it impossible for the store to re-open in less than 6 years. Its 1,500 workers have been left in limbo.
The closure of La Samaritaine officially came about because of the Préfecture of Paris’ ruling to advocate closing the site to the public due to fire risks. More generally, this building, over a hundred years old and with floor space of 61,000 m2, is to be completely renovated in order that it may comply with safety standards.
In Spring 2005, the management thus informed the Health and Hygiene Committee (Comité d’hygiène et de sécurité, CHSCT) and the Works Council that the store would close completely for a 6-18 month period from 15 June 2005. The reason given was to 'bring it up to date with stringent safety standards’ prior to the beginning of a second period of work that would see the store totally or partially closed for between three and 10 years'.
The decision taken by the Louis Vuitton - Moët Hennessy (LVMH) group, the owner of the department store since 2001, took both employees and unions by surprise.
Of the 1,500 employees working at La Samaritaine, almost 600 are employed on site as demonstrators by other companies and are not paid by Samaritaine. The management announced that it was to contact their employers 'so that these workers did not have to suffer because of this closure'.
Of the 750 people directly employed by the store, 300 are still working on site, performing IT and accountancy tasks.
The other 400 have been placed on 'technical' unemployment and are therefore still being paid. From the perspective of staff at La Samaritaine, this closure for safety reasons smacks of restructuring and has raised a great deal of anxiety.
The French Christian Workers' Confederation (Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens, CFTC) the majority union at the store, mobilised around the issue and decided to take Samaritaine to court 'both for impeding the operation of the works council and endangering people’s lives'. The union contends that the management has known about the safety hazards being faced since August 2002. It also feels that: 'La Samaritaine failed in its obligation to inform the staff representative bodies about the serious anomalies conveyed to the management in January 2005 by the Préfecture de Police’s safety committee.'
The lawyer acting for La Samaritaine’s works council argues that 'the announcement overnight of a closure for reasons known about for years is questionable'. It is true that for a number of years, the firm had been closing many of its departments, and its turnover had been constantly falling: from EUR 147 million in 2001 to EUR 108 million in 2004.
Watch this space : it will soon be known whether the 6-year closure of La Samaritaine will be partial or total, with all the consequences for industrial relations that the second possibility would entail.
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Eurofound recommends citing this publication in the following way.
Eurofound (2005), Uncertain Future for La Samaritaine Workers, article.
