A setback for Yves Rocher. The judicial court of Vannes has annulled an agreement signed between the Breton family group Rocher (formerly Yves Rocher, cosmetics) and two majority unions that planned to cut 300 jobs over three years, mainly in Brittany, we learned on Thursday from concordant sources. The Force Ouvrière trade union had taken the matter to court, challenging this employment and career management agreement (GEPP) signed on January 16, 2023 by the CFE-CGC and the CFTC.
The court of Vannes annulled this agreement because the CFTC federation for chemicals, mines, textiles and energy, which had signed it, had not fulfilled its obligations to publish the accounts by that date. In their November 14 ruling, a copy of which was seen by AFP, the judges ruled that the CFTC's signature was therefore invalid and that the threshold for the representativeness of the signatory unions had therefore not been met. "We expect the management to resume its negotiations," Pierrick Simon, FO departmental secretary of Morbihan, told AFP. "If management wants to cut jobs, it will have to go through a job protection plan or a voluntary redundancy plan, but then they will have to take out the chequebook," he said. For Pierrick Simon, the GEPP agreement amounted to "having the taxpayer finance the departure of employees" largely through public schemes.
Rock wants to appeal
Contacted by AFP, the management of the Rocher group announced its intention to appeal the ruling, noting that the annulment is due to "an exclusively formal reason related to the administrative situation of one of the signatory unions". According to the Commission, "this judgment does not, however, in any way call into question the relevance or the substantive validity of the measures instituted by this agreement to support employees in the evolution of their jobs.
»The cancelled agreement provided for 300 job cuts, without outright redundancies among the measures spread over three years "to adapt the organisation of our Breton industrial sites and offer professional development prospects to employees", the management told AFP in January. The Rocher group highlighted "exogenous economic factors (Covid, the geopolitical situation, inflation, etc.) and endogenous (the fall in mail-order sales)" which had "weakened the group". In addition to its cosmetics brand, Yves Rocher, the Rocher Group, present in more than 100 countries, owns nine brands, including Arbonne, Petit Bateau and Dr Pierre Ricaud, and employs more than 16,000 people.