Around 3,500 employees are affected by the closure of the Mein Real department store chain. Criticism of the owner’s behavior comes from the Verdi union.
The Verdi union criticized the owner SCP after the closure announcement for 45 stores of the Mein Real hypermarket chain. “The investor SCP is shirking its responsibility and the taxpayers are paying for it by paying the insolvency money,” said Verdi State Secretary for Retail NRW, Heino Georg Kaßler, to the German Press Agency on Tuesday.
My Real is still in bankruptcy and under self-administration. Even long-term employees are only entitled to a maximum of two and a half months’ salary due to a capped severance payment in accordance with the Insolvency Code. Around 3,500 people are affected by the closure of the 45 stores and the headquarters.
Real GmbH announced on Monday that it wanted to sell a total of 18 of the 63 stores to Rewe, Kaufland and Edeka. The remaining 45 stores are to be closed by March 31, 2024, as “despite intensive efforts, no buyer has yet been found” for these locations. Business operations in the markets affected by the closure are expected to continue as normal until the end of March 2024.
At the end of September, the company stated the number of employees in the branches and at the headquarters in Mönchengladbach was over 5,000. The company announced on Monday that the transfer of the 18 stores meant it was able to provide around 1,500 employees with long-term future prospects. At the end of September, Real stated the number of branches as 62 because a currently closed branch in Braunschweig was not counted at the time.
“The SCP does not see itself as a strategic trading company, but is purely a processing company,” Kaßler continued. This was already the case after Real was bought from Metro. At that time, SCP’s interest was primarily in real estate.
SCP acquired the Real chain, which had 276 stores at the time, from the Metro trading group in 2020 in order to break it up and sell it on. Kaufland, Edeka, Globus and Rewe secured a large number of the most attractive branches. After an interim sale, the company has been owned by SCP again since May.
Source: Stern
