Tuesday, October 22 and then Wednesday, October 23. Figarorue de Provence in Paris, the management and elected officials of the Economic and Social Council (CSE) will meet in an extraordinary meeting for the second and third time in a few days. On Thursday, October 17, a reorganization plan was presented that covers several departments: editorial (the department that writes the articles), iconography, artistic direction, documentation, etc. Ultimately, according to management, twelve positions should disappear, seventeen according to the unions, which include three voluntary resignations that occurred in recent months and two sick leave in the workforce.
“Every three or four years we reorganize the printed edition, in structural decay”, justifies Marc Feuillée, general director of the Figaro Group. This “simplifying the editing process” must lead to “productivity savings” for an amount of 1.5 million euros annually, in particular thanks to the use of more efficient digital tools. “It seems that the management places a lot of hope (…) on new tools, including artificial intelligence, aimed at automating certain tasks (choosing photographs, image processing, correction, etc.)”, laments the SNJ union (majority in the editorial staff) in a press release.
Damaged trust in management
In return, says Mr. Feuillée, Le Figaro “continues hiring” journalists, whether the creation of“around a hundred positions in four or five years”broken down into the five “local editorial offices”the social media unit and the FigaroTV channel. “According to the slide they presented to us, there are around sixty positions since 2019”corrects Laurent Mardelay, representative of the CGT union (majority in the company). In any case, in the technical editorial department, where those who remain already fear additional work, as in the editorial office, the newspaper’s good sales figures and the visits to the registered facilities this summer have not allayed concerns .
Confidence in the editorial direction, damaged by the two editorials by director Alexis Brézet, in Europa 1 and in the newspaper, considered favorable to the national demonstration and which gave rise to a letter of protest signed by 205 journalists, did not return. It even resumed this summer, when a “a long-scheduled interview with Thomas Jolly,” The director of the opening and closing ceremonies of the two Olympic Games, strongly criticized by the extreme right, was canceled, according to a report by the Society of Journalists (SDJ), which questioned Brézet on this issue. This week, again, there was tension around the singer Philippe Katerine, who appeared, during the opening ceremony on July 26, naked and all in blue in a painting seen by ultra-conservative Catholics as a parody of The Last Supper. A crossover interview with Dominique A, which could only have been published on the web but not in the print edition, was cancelled. “She is pregnant”rectifies an editorial framework, by which “no problems”.
