France’s influential Le Monde daily faces job cuts
April 5th, 2008 | by admin |PARIS, April 5 (Reuters) - The new management team atFrance’s establishment newspaper, Le Monde, has proposedshedding 130 staff, including a quarter of its journalists, inan effort to stem heavy losses.
Eric Fottorino, who was recently appointed as chiefexecutive of the Le Monde group, told staff on Friday the toughrestructuring plan was needed to keep the paper afloat.
“To reject it would surely deny us any chance of success andwould put the future of the group in danger,” Fottorino and hisdeputy, David Guiraud, said in a statement published on thewebsite of Le Monde.
Unions said the proposed cuts were unacceptable.
Le Monde has announced losses of 20 million euros ($31.4million) for 2007, after registering a loss of 14.3 millioneuros in 2006. Its debt mountain stands at 150 million euros.
Fottorino said he wanted the group to balance its books in2009 and register a profit in 2010. To do that, it needed tofind 15 million euros of structural savings, he wrote.
Amongst his proposals were the sale of non-strategic assetsand a plan to shed 130 jobs, mostly in Le Monde’s newsroom whichemploys some 340 journalists. Fottorino said there would be avoluntary redundancy plan and forced lay offs.
The group’s journalists hold a blocking stake in Le Mondeand could veto the plan. However, the paper’s financial woesmean major shareholders like aerospace-to-media conglomerateLagardere might have to pump cash into the company to help itpay its bills and will thereby dilute the workers’ holding.
Le Monde (The World) was founded at the time of theliberation from Nazi occupation in 1944 and has become France’smost influential daily.
