In November 2007, the sale of the daily business newspaper, Les Échos, to the French luxury goods group, Louis Vuitton Moët-Hennessy, led to a strike of the newspaper’s journalists on 5 and 6 November 2007. They thus demonstrated their concern about both the consequences of the sale for jobs and its impact on editorial independence, including a possible conflict of interest with the buyer’s business interests.
After four months of polemic, procedure and conflict, the saga of the sale of the daily business newspaper, Les Échos, came to an end on 5 November 2007, when the court rejected the workers’ claim opposing the sale. In protest over the transaction, the journalists stopped their work and, for the first time in its history, copies of Les Échos were not available on 6 and 7 November 2007.
Background to the sale
The British media group, Pearson, which owned the title, along with the Financial Times, announced in June 2007 that it intended to sell the French newspaper. The Les Échos Group employs 500 workers and reported a turnover of €126.2 million in 2006. Its circulation of 116,762 copies daily is exceptional, given the unfavourable situation in the French newspaper industry (see the French contribution (135Kb MS Word doc) to the EIRO comparative study on industrial relations in the print media sector).
From the beginning, in June 2007, Pearson chose to have exclusive sales talks with Bernard Arnault, who is the owner of Louis Vuitton Moët-Hennessy (LVMH) – a luxury goods group, including brands such as the fashion and leather goods designer Louis Vuitton, the beauty products, jewellery and fashion designer Dior, the beauty products and fashion designer Kenzo, the perfume house Guerlain, and the champagne house Moët & Chandon. Mr Arnault stated his intention to buy the newspaper for the sum of €240 million. At the same time, LVMH put up for sale its own business daily, La Tribune. This was essential in order to get the approval of the Competition, Consumer Affairs and Trading Standards Department (Direction Générale de la Concurrence, de la Consommation et de la Répression des Fraudes, DGCCRF); otherwise, Mr Arnault would have owned both French daily business newspapers.
Journalists oppose the deal
Journalists marked their opposition to the sale process. As early as 23 June 2007, the journalists of both newspapers – Les Échos and La Tribune – went on strike to demonstrate their hostility to the sale of both operations.
In July, journalists at Les Échos supported another offer of €245 million, that is, €5 million more than the offer by LVMH. A financial services company, Fimalac, headed by Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, made this alternative bid.
Works council members at Les Échos went to court, denouncing the ‘opacity’ of the sale process. The judge in chambers finally rejected the workers’ case on 5 November 2007, and Pearson and LVMH immediately announced the completion of the sale. Journalists at Les Échos heard the news through a dispatch, just as they were finalising the next day’s newspaper. A large majority of workers voted for strike action – 241 in favour and 96 against – and the newspaper was not published on 6 and 7 November.
On 5 November – which the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) designated as ‘European Day of Action for Journalists’ Rights’ – the journalists’ inter-union committee organised a demonstration in front of the French National Assembly (parliament) and submitted its proposals to deputies along with a petition that had been launched on 4 October: ‘Democracy does not exist without freedom of the press’. The inter-union committee comprises the National Union of Journalists (Syndicat national des journalistes, SNJ) and the journalist trade unions affiliated to the General Confederation of Labour (Confédération générale du travail, CGT), the French Christian Workers’ Confederation (Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens, CFTC), the French Democratic Confederation of Labour (Confédération française démocratique du travail, CFDT) and the General Confederation of Labour – Force ouvrière (Confédération générale du travail – Force ouvrière, CGT-FO).
It was the first time in 15 years that the journalists’ trade unions took united action. They proposed ‘a law guaranteeing editorial independence at a time of an increasingly big drift in ethics and more and more media buy-outs and pressure on news content, which jeopardise everyone’s right to honest, independent and viable information’ (www.intersj.info).
Concerns about jobs and editorial independence
Journalists opposed the operation because, in their view, it ‘opens up an era of serious uncertainty for the paper both regarding its independence, given a conflict of interest with LVMH, and also regarding the situation of employees and overall strategy’ (Les Échos Society of Journalists (Société des journalistes des Échos), 8 November 2007). The other bidder, Fimalac, seemed to offer better guarantees regarding independence, notably with editorial staff’s right to veto any change in the newspaper’s charter.
The journalists have won the support of the Association of Journalists of Social and Industrial Relations Information (Association des journalistes de l’information sociale, AJIS) on this major issue. In a press release of 12 November 2007, the AJIS states that it:
is concerned about the conditions in which the journalists of Les Échos will do their job when, in the future, they will have to cover news about one of the many brands owned by LVMH, which is a world leader in the luxury sector and an important business player in distribution. It supports them in their battle to obtain from their new shareholder all the editorial and ethical guarantees necessary for producing the leading business daily newspaper in France.
The newspaper’s employees are also worried about jobs. LVMH has undertaken not to resort to redundancies over the next 48 months, unless there is a decline in turnover of the Les Échos Group of more than 20% compared with the 2006 figures. However, the employees concerned consider that this undertaking has no legal value, because a collective agreement has not been signed on this issue. They fear, in particular, that duplicate job positions exist, particularly in general services and advertising in the media division of LVMH (DI Group, formerly Desfossés International) and Les Échos.
Nicolas Beytout, former editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper Le Figaro, was appointed on 26 November 2007 to head the media section of LVMH. In his view, ‘the fact that business groups are interested should be seen as an opportunity, not as a danger’.
Meanwhile, employees at La Tribune, which is in the process of being sold by LVMH to NextRadioTV, went on strike to win guarantees in relation to ‘safeguarding jobs and editorial quality’. The newspaper did not come out on 30 November and 1 December 2007.
Yves Lochard, Institute for Economic and Social Research (IRES)