"Come back quickly, bring us back to sport, all sports, and continue to tell us, to tell me": 180 top-level athletes signed a letter of support on Friday to the journalists of L'Équipe on strike since January 8.
However, they will not have the pleasure of finding the daily newspaper in the kiosks on Saturday: the intersyndicale SNJ, SNJ-CGT, UFICT-CGT, SGLCE-CGT decided on Friday to renew its call to strike for 24 hours.
The newspaper will therefore not appear for the 8th day in a row, its management told AFP.
“For years now, we rub shoulders, we discuss at the edge of the fields, roads, swimming pools, gymnasiums, tracks.
Years of exchanging, sometimes losing oneself, ”notes the text signed by some of the biggest names in sport, active or retired, French or not.
From Rudy Gobert to Marie-José Pérec via Dante, Greg Lemond, Renaud Lavillenie, Samantha Davies, Yannick Noah, Michel Platini, Pauline Ferrand-Prévost or Alain Prost, but also leaders like Jean-Michel Aulas or coaches like Corinne Deacon, all hope to see the daily sports in the kiosks as soon as possible.
“By accompanying my first steps, my victories, my medals, you have been the link with my supporters, millions of sports enthusiasts.
You did not hide my defeats, my doubts either.
I confided in you, it was sometimes tense but we always reconciled.
We have never broken that link.
Except in recent days when, absent from kiosks, laptops, tablets, you leave us helpless, ”underlines the text published on social networks, where testimonies of support are pouring in every day.
It's been a week since the @lequipe newspaper has been away from the newsstands and it hurts my heart.
For twenty years, the sports daily has supported my career.
He told all my stories, my joys and my most difficult moments.
What sad news ...
- Tony Parker (@tonyparker) January 15, 2021
For a French athlete, it is difficult to explain the pride that one feels with his first coverage of @lequipe!
Good luck to all the striking journalists, come back quickly!
- Evan Fournier (@EvanFourmizz) January 15, 2021
Even the Minister of Sports, Roxana Maracineanu, reacted Friday on Twitter: “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 measured that L'Equipe has been missing from sport, ”she wrote.
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 has been posted Thursday on social networks: "I know the difficulties of the written press but I also know that we win matches or races as a team (...) We, we need YOUR TEAM", writes in particular Madiot.
A large majority of the daily journalists are on strike against the job protection plan (PSE) unveiled in the fall by the management of the L'Equipe group, and which provides for the elimination of around fifty jobs, including 47 journalists, within SAS L'Équipe (the daily, the magazine, Vélo Magazine and the weekly France football, in the process of becoming a monthly) which employs 350 people.
The goal is to save 5 million euros and avoid 6 million losses in 2021, in a context of declining paper sales made worse by the health crisis and the end of sports competitions in the spring.
The unions are invited Monday to a meeting on "the alternative project proposed by the management", according to the latter.
This week, management proposed better starting conditions, but also an alternative to the PSE, a modified version of a draft collective performance agreement (CPA) rejected this summer by the unions, with a cut in wages of 5 % until the end of 2024 at the latest and the abandonment of 10 days of RTT.
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