PSA Peugeot Citroen is to put forward a radical plan to its unions that could see the automaker leave its traditional Paris headquarters in 2017 for a location in the capital’s western suburbs as it looks to accelerate a cost cutting drive.
The French automaker has around 2,200 employees – some 1,500 of whom are located at the prestigious Avenue de la Grande Armee responsible for the company’s finance and administration departments – in Paris – but the bold plan must now be put to its powerful unions at a meting on 16 January.
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“We will present for a moving project [on] 16 January…to the unions,” a PSA spokeswoman told just-auto from Paris. “We are tenants already in our current headquarters – the owners will retake the property.
“After, it will be a [new] headquarters that is not very far from Paris. It is a project of rationalisation, of costs. We have not [yet] estimated the cost of this relocation – it is complicated.”
PSA has enjoyed relatively harmonious industrial relations of late with its many unions, following an “inter-generational contract” it agreed that will see up to 3,500 employees leave.
The scheme – which will run in tandem with hiring an unspecified number of young people – will apply to those staff from 52-54 years old and is within the framework of the social contract.
Any move to leave the Grande Armee HQ – which PSA already operates on a sale and leaseback arrangement – also comes on the back of the EUR800m (US$942m) the automaker raised by selling a stake of its logistics division Gefco to Russian Railways.
Unions however, will be particularly wary of any employment implications of the move, but PSA insists it has no idea what, if any, will be the jobs impact.
“I have no answer to give about that topic,” the PSA spokeswoman said. “What we know is usually, when you move offices, some people don’t follow, but we have no idea of the impact of moving to a new office.”
