EBRA job cuts: French regional press group plans up to 400 departures, unions say AI will replace copy editors, management denies it

EBRA, the French regional press group owned by Crédit Mutuel, plans up to 400 voluntary departures from about 3,200 staff, and its unions say AI is meant to take over much of the work of the copy editors being cut; management says it is not. Staff across all nine of the group's dailies, including Le Progrès, Le Dauphiné libéré and L'Est républicain, struck on 9 October 2026, AFP reported, with the SNJ journalists' union putting turnout at about 67%. According to the unions, a third of copy-editor posts, the staff who lay out the papers, are to go, with AI used "massively" to assist the journalists who remain. Asked by AFP, EBRA's management said the plan "rests exclusively on volunteers: no departure will be forced" and that "artificial intelligence tools are designed to make newsrooms' work easier, not to replace them" (our translation). The plan was announced at the end of June; the group's single-copy sales and subscriptions have halved in ten years and its operating loss passed €10 million in 2025. Talks with staff representatives end on 2 November. The AI link comes from the unions and the employer denies it, so nothing here enters the AI layoffs tracker.