Carrefour was due to hold a meeting of its enterprise board on Tuesday, 23 February, to examine the current situation regarding Belgian operations, in particular the 57 hypermarkets it runs here. The French company is the world’s second-biggest retailer after Wal-Mart and recently announced profits down more than 70% on the year before.

In June, the company announced restructuring plans involving €4.5 billion of savings across Western Europe, in an effort to stop the continuing loss of market share to competitors Delhaize and Colruyt. In the last quarter of 2009, Carrefour lost 123 basis points to reach a market share of 24.91%, while Colruyt gained 70 points to reach 23.78% and Delhaize rose 62 points to 25.8%. Earlier this month, the company announced a plan to reduce the stock offered in its hypermarkets and rent out the free space that was created, while at the same time returning to the core business of food retailing.

The company employs 16,000 people in Belgium, but unions were looking forward to this week’s board meeting with trepidation. “I’m afraid there are going to be sackings,” said Chris Van Droogenbroeck of the Christian union LBC.

“This has all the appearances of a Renault procedure,” said socialist union representative Jan De Weghe, referring to the mandatory negotiation of a “social plan” to deal with workers made redundant, brought in when car-maker Renault closed a factory in Vilvoorde.

Meanwhile, the stock in Carrefour hypermarkets was shrinking last week as a dispute involving drivers employed by a haulage company brought deliveries to a standstill. The drivers work for Supertransport, which is based in Ternat, and which has a haulage contract with Carrefour. The dispute concerns the sacking of dispatchers following the introduction of a new computer system.

There were also problems at Logistics Ternat, a division of Kühne & Nagel, which operates three distribution centres for Carrefour, in Ternat, Kontich and Nivelles. Carrefour has made it clear it finds Ternat old-fashioned and surplus to requirements, and the contract with Logistics Ternat is about to run out.

The fear of job losses led staff there to begin industrial action involving a blockade of the loading bay. The Ternat centre supplies the hypermarkets with about 34% of their product range. The 600 other Carrefour shops, such as the smaller GB Express, are not affected.