After the sale of the Real retail chain to a group of investors, the closure of seven branches is sealed. Further markets are to follow. The Verdi union sees up to ten thousand jobs at risk – and criticizes the sales process sharply.
The ink has barely dried under the sales contract for the Real supermarket chain, so things are getting serious for the company’s first employees. By mid-next year at the latest, seven stores in Bamberg, Deggendorf, Augsburg, Papenburg, Rheine, Bad Sobernheim and in Wildau near Berlin are scheduled to close. A total of 650 employees are affected.
The closings were discussed with the future real owner, the Russian financial investor SCP. Shortly after signing the purchase contract with Metro, SCP announced that it wanted to close around 30 branches due to a lack of future prospects. The rest of the chain is said to be broken. The majority of the 276 Real stores are to be sold to competitors such as Kaufland, Globus or Edeka. Only a core of 50 branches are to be continued under the Real name for another 24 months.
Union sees politics as a duty
The alarm bells ring at the Verdi union in view of the situation. “This is a bitter day for the employees at Real, and unfortunately it is not the last bad news after this disastrous sales process,” said Verdi Federal Executive Board member Stefanie Benefberger.
On the previous evening, she had asked Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier from the CDU to finally take action and get everyone involved to a table. “It’s about 34,000 people with their families who don’t know if they’ll still have work in a year,” she said in Düsseldorf. Here the federal government is required.
According to earlier information, the union sees up to 10,000 jobs at risk in the course of the takeover. It is not just about the 30 branches that are to be closed. The future of jobs at the 50 branches, which will continue to operate as a real core for at least 24 months, is also uncertain, said the Verdi federal group leader for retail, Orhan Akman.
Employees face an uncertain future
“Nobody is able to run a company with only 50 department stores economically in the long run,” the industry expert is convinced. The whole thing is nothing more than a “calming pill” for the employees. And even with stores that are given to competitors, Verdi says employees cannot be sure to keep their jobs. Because many of the Real branches would have to be extensively renovated or even divided into several shops in order to have a future. Doing this during ongoing operations is an illusion in many cases.
The union fears that many employees may end up being fired due to the long conversion times and that they will have to apply again to the successor companies later. This would mean that they would lose their social entitlements, some of which had accumulated over decades. To prevent this, Verdi wants to try to conclude social collective agreements with SCP and the potential buyers of real branches such as Kaufland or Edeka, which guarantee a smooth transition.
SCP Group boss Marjorie Brabet-Friel announced shortly after the signing of the purchase contract that the financial investor would try “to avoid closings and layoffs as much as possible”. But at the same time, it limited that SCP’s further action also depended on the future commitment of the other parties involved, from the employees, works councils and unions to politics and the landlords.
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