Text of report by French news agency AFP
Paris, 25 June 2010: The trade unions at Radio France Internationale (RFI) - SNJ, FO, SNJ-CGT and SNRT-CGT - spoke on Friday [25 June] about the “very serious situation” in which the radio finds itself, both from a financial point of view and from the point of view of the reforms proposed, assertions that are rejected by the management.
“Less than two years after it was appointed, the management is reporting a disastrous performance, both from the financial point of view and in terms of the highly improvised reforms proposed,” say the unions in an open letter to the administrators of the state-owned station (management, state, independent parties).
In this letter, the trade unions accuse the management of having increased its deficit to 28.2m euros in 2009, “the biggest in the entire history of RFI”. The cost of the restructuring plan rose to 40m euros, twice the size of the amount announced by the management to the works council, the unions continue. RFI is emerging from a restructuring plan that led to around 160 staff departing.
The unions also believe that the management strategy “is about cutting RFI down” to “the size of a radio intended almost exclusively for Africa”.
The management described these remarks by the unions as “untruths”.
“It is the opposite of what we want to do,” was the reaction given by Genevieve Goetzinger, deputy manager of the state-owned station, to AFP. She thus explained that there was no question of focusing solely on Africa. “There is no deficit, RFI’s books are balanced,” she added, noting that the cost of the plan to safeguard jobs will be taken care of by the state.
(Source: AFP news agency, Paris, in French 1515 gmt 25 Jun 10 via BBC Monitoring)
