While negotiations are taking place at Spiders on remote work and annual pay rises for 2024, company COO and SNJV (french employer’s organisation) president Anne Devouassoux took the liberty of demanding that the STJV change the company’s trade union delegate.
Negotiations at Spiders have been going on for several months now, and have been slowed down by the management’s attitude. The climate surrounding these negotiations is very tense. As our union delegate was on sick leave for 4 weeks, negotiations were necessarily put on hold during this period, but all we had to do was wait for his return to resume them.
Anne Devouassoux, who wants to roll back the freedom to work from home acquired within the studio and is offering workers “between 0 and 3%” pay increase, sent an unbelievable mail to our union and our delegate. In her letter, she tries to exert pressure on our representatives to put an end to negotiations altough they have no deadline. These actions constitute union discrimination against our delegate.
Before trying to intimidate a democratic and independent trade union, she could have turned to the STJV’s duly mandated negotiating delegation in her company.
Anne Devouassoux claims to represent employees and to be acting in their best interests, while at the same time threatening in a follow-up email to unilaterally terminate negotiations, which would lead to the imposition of rules that have been overwhelmingly rejected by Spiders’ workers, whatever the management is pretending internally. Whilst workers want negotiations to succeed, they do not want this to happen at any cost.
As an employer, and the president of an employers’ union to boot, Anne Devouassoux cannot claim to represent and defend the interests of workers, especially when she has explicitly refused to consult Spiders employees on the negotiations underway. Workers are represented by the elected staff representatives and the representative trade unions in the company.
We demand that she put an end to these gross manoeuvres, and that she respect employee representation, our trade union freedom and the principles of fair negotiation. The injunctions and allusions made in her letter and email are intolerable. Trade union discrimination is an offence under the French Labour Code and Criminal Code.
To ensure that negotiations run smoothly and reach a successful conclusion, we advise Spiders’ management to provide the delegation with the necessary information, listen to employees and accede to the demands of the STJV trade union section.
This advice applies to all companies. We will never give in to intimidation, and we will help all workers who are victims of it.