Sustainability
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◼ SOLUTIONSshould be able to shop at any hour, letting companies
require employees to work undesirable shifts. “Sunday
should be for rest, for spending time with friends and
family,” says Joanny Poncet, a union representative at
Casino’s Franprix chain. “There’s no reason consumers
can’t plan ahead and shop another time.”
Grocers have long been allowed to open on Sunday
mornings, but the afternoons had remained sacrosanct.
Owners say they’re giving customers what they want and
insist self-checkout machines haven’t spurred job losses.
If anything, Casino says, it means more staff on Sunday
mornings to stock stores so they’re ready to go when
workers leave for the day. The company says a hypermar-
ket in Angers, two hours west of Paris by train, now sees
more than 1,000 customers on a typical Sunday after-
noon, about as many as during the morning shift staffed
by clerks. But France had 195,000 checkout clerks in
2014, down from 220,000 in 2005, and the shift to auto-
mated checkouts threatens to accelerate the decline.
The trend toward longer hours got a big push in 2015
when Emmanuel Macron, economy minister at the time,
tweaked the rules to allow shops in tourist zones to
remain open all day on Sundays. Now, Macron’s govern-
ment is trying to make it easier for stores to stay open
late into the evening by reducing the number of hours
they’re required to be closed overnight. But the French
state doesn’t always move in sync: Agnes Pannier-
Runacher, a junior economy minister, suggested in an
August radio interview that the late-night shops might
be violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the law.
Cedric Lecasble, an analyst at MainFirst Bank AG,
says France is simply following a practice that’s been
widely adopted in Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. While
France’s unions will put up a fight, he says more automa-
tion is inevitable, whatever a store’s opening hours. “As
consumers get used to making smaller, more frequent
purchases and with e-commerce making it so they can
shop whenever they wish,” Lecasble says, “it’s hard to
envision that the unions will be able to block this forever.”
On a recent Sunday at a Casino outlet in Les Lilas,
a suburb just east of Paris, a security guard at the door
tells customers there’s no alcohol available. The shelves
are less well-stocked than usual, but no one complains.
Line Niget, a chiropractor, says she prefers to shop during
regular hours, but the convenience is hard to resist. “If
you offer a service, people are going to come,” she says.
Lucas Ghosn, a student, says even when clerks are pres-
ent, he tends to choose the self-checkout. “I buy just a
few items,” he says. “The regular registers are usually full
of people making bigger purchases.” �Robert WilliamsTHE BOTTOM LINE French store owners say extended hours serve
customers and won’t spur job cuts. Unions say the trend will increase
pressure on workers to take undesirable shifts.①
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