Three Casino stores in the Pink City and two in the Toulouse conurbation will have to close on Sundays from 1 p.m. and until 10 p.m. for some. For several years, supermarket brands have decided to open the doors of their supermarket on Sundays, without calling on their staff, but using automatic checkouts with the sole presence of security guards from subcontracting companies.
In Toulouse, as in many cities in France, the Casino group had set up these Sunday openings in 2019 in several of its establishments. To the chagrin of the CFDT-services which quickly found that “labour law is not respected”.
An agreement on Sunday work in Haute-Garonne
Initially, the union had filed a legal action to obtain the closure of three establishments. This was the case at first instance, appeal and up to the Court of Cassation which had rendered the final decision at the end of last year.
The union has just won a new legal round over five other stores with a judgment this time pronounced by the Court of Appeal during the week. “We will continue to take legal action whenever labor law is not respected. When cashing in at automatic terminals, there are often incidents. It takes an intervention or call a hotline and it was the security guards who did this work, this is what the labor inspectorate discovered, ”notes Laurent Jeudi, the general secretary of the CFDT services Ariège-Gascogne- Midi Toulousain, pointing there to functions usually performed by employees.
Casino appeals in cassation
These same employees who, according to him, find the aisles of these stores on their own every Monday in a sad state. “Historically, in our department, we have a negotiated agreement on Sundays and public holidays worked. For other stores, these openings are not healthy competition. We won’t let go, we can’t do anything, ”he laments, saying he is ready to sit around the table at a conference to address the issue of Sunday work.
The Casino group indicates that this court decision “imposes the closing of the four stores on Sunday afternoon once we have received official notification of the decision”. Like the previous actions, he indicates “to appeal to the Court of Cassation which has already expressed itself favorably on this subject on five occasions” in other files, in particular a dispute relating to the opening of a store in the Var.