“Shameful” for employees who “already sacrifice their family life”: Sophie Binet criticizes the government's proposal to allow traders to open three additional Sundays until Christmas

“I am very angry with the government, because it is always the employees who pay.” The general secretary of the CGT, Sophie Binet, spoke this Monday on France 2 against the measure proposed by the executive last week to allow businesses to open three additional Sundays between now and Christmas, in order to compensate for losses linked to demonstrations throughout France. “There are already a thousand and one ways to open on Sunday,” says Sophie Binet, when questioned about this proposal, first formulated by the Commerce Alliance following the damage of October 17.

“I would like to remind you that employees who work in the retail sector are overwhelmingly women, are very largely already subject to atypical hours in the evening and on weekends, and sacrifice their family life. And they would also be required to work on Sundays,” deplores the general delegate of the CGT. According to the Federation of Commerce and Distribution, retail trade represents 1.8 million employees in France, including 792.

000 in the food industry. “We can go further” according to the Minister of Commerce In detail, these openings would be “voluntary” and would, according to the Minister of Labor Jean-Pierre Farandou, make it possible to compensate for the closures during Saturdays of demonstrations. This is an “OK in principle”, “for a few months, if it can help to regain activity”, declared the minister last week.

This Monday morning, it was the turn of the Minister of Commerce, Serge Papin, to defend the measure in the media. He confirmed, on RTL, that he was going to "request this week that the prefects be able to use a decree" allowing traders to work three additional Sundays until Christmas, that is to say among the next 7 weekends. Knowing that mayors can already, according to the law, authorize openings 12 Sundays per year.

“We can go further than these three additional Sundays,” he also declared, “but this will be subject to negotiations with the unions and employers’ organizations.” Sophie Binet deplores, for her part, a series of measures “exclusively aimed at bosses”, and that “there is nothing for employees”. "Frankly, we are already imposing on them a loss of 40% of their remuneration (via partial unemployment, editor's note), and we would also require them to sacrifice their family life by working on Sundays...

It's not serious, it's shameful to do this! ", she emphasized.

Machine-translated from French