France: Employee outrage after Michelin and Auchan cut more than 3,600 jobs

Plant closures, redundancy plans… On Tuesday 5 November, retailer Auchan and automotive supplier Michelin announced a combined total of more than 3,600 job cuts in France, provoking sadness and anger among the employees concerned.

A difficult day for employment in **France**. On the one hand, Michelin, the leading tyre manufacturer, announced on Tuesday that it would be closing two industrial sites in the west of the country before 2026, in Cholet (Maine-et-Loire) and Vannes (Brittany), affecting 1,254 employees.

On the other hand, the retailer Auchan, after several difficult years, is planning to cut 2,389 jobs out of a total of 53,000 in France, in particular by closing around ten shops.

Colossal financial losses at Auchan

Prime Minister Michel Barnier said he wanted to ‘know’ what the Auchan and Michelin groups had done ‘with the public money we gave them ’.

‘ I am not proud […] of a policy that would destroy jobs, ever ’, added the Prime Minister before the National Assembly during the government question time. ‘ I want to know what these groups did with the public money we gave them. I want to know. And so we are going to ask questions and we will see whether this money has been well or badly used so that we can learn lessons from it ’, he explained.