Michel Platini, Laure Manaudou, Yannick Noah, Marie-José Pérec, Olivier Giroud, Thibaut Pinot, Olivier Giroud… More than 180 athletes, including dozens of celebrities, wrote a petition this Friday in support of the editorial staff of the sports newspaper L ' Team, most of which has been on strike for eight days now.
"I confided in you, it was sometimes tense but we were always reconciled […] Come back quickly, bring sport back to life, all sports, and continue to tell us, to tell me, perhaps. we read in this text entitled "Come back to us quickly The Team!"
".
Batum, Dumerc, Ferrand-Prévot, Giroud, Gobert, Hinault, Ibañez, Lavillenie, Manaudou, Mayer, Merckx, Noah, Parker, Pérec, Pinot, Platini, Prost, Renard and more than 180 athletes: "Come back quickly The Team!"
»#ReviensviteLEquipe pic.twitter.com/0UrA48Q8BO
- vincent duluc (@vincentduluc) January 15, 2021
The newspaper's inter-union (SNJ, SNJ-CGT, UFICT-CGT, SGLCE-CGT) decided on Thursday to renew the call for a strike launched on January 8.
This call can "be suspended at any time", remind the unions in an email sent to management.
They are calling for the suspension of the job protection plan (PSE) unveiled in the fall and a meeting with "a representative of the Amaury Group (owner of the Team and organizer of the Tour de France) or a mediator".
In a letter sent Thursday evening to employees, Jean-Etienne Amaury, the managing director of the eponymous group, deplored a "movement" in "complete discrepancy with the economic reality of the company".
“To be a profitable company, at least in equilibrium” is a “non-negotiable constraint”, he insisted.
The incriminated PES provides for the elimination of around fifty posts, including 47 journalist posts, within the SAS L'Equipe (the daily, the magazine, Vélo Magazine and the weekly France football, in the process of becoming a monthly) which employs 350 people.
A financially unjustified project, according to staff representatives
"How to accept that a group saves money by getting rid of young journalists when it earns money every year, in particular thanks to public funds [...] and that it has still paid 11 million euros of dividend to its shareholders in 2019?
", Indignant the staff representatives in a text published Thursday on a blog of Mediapart.
"Editorial side," small sports will be treated less, an astonishing choice three years before the Olympic Games in Paris ", they deplore.
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To this massive support from the sporting world is also added, on Friday, that of the Minister of Sports Roxana Maracineanu.
“Sport is going through difficult times.
We have realized in recent months how essential it is to our daily lives.
For a week we have also measured that (the newspaper) L'Equipe is lacking in sport, "tweeted the former swimmer.
Sport is going through a difficult period.
We have realized in recent months how essential it is to our daily lives.
For a week we have also seen that @lequipe has been missing from sport
- Roxana Maracineanu (@RoxaMaracineanu) January 15, 2021
Another initiative, a handwritten letter sent by the director of the Groupama-FDJ cycling team, Marc Madiot, to "Madame Amaury" (Marie-Odile Amaury, owner of the eponymous group to which the newspaper belongs) and a photo of which was posted on Thursday on social networks: "I know the difficulties of the written press, but I also know that we win team matches or races […] We need YOUR TEAM", writes Madiot in particular.
