Influential Le Monde newspaper faces job cuts

PARIS (Reuters) - The new management team at France's establishment newspaper, Le Monde, has proposed shedding 130 staff, including a quarter of its journalists, in an effort to stem heavy losses.

Eric Fottorino, who was recently appointed as chief executive of the Le Monde group, told staff on Friday the tough restructuring plan was needed to keep the paper afloat.

"To reject it would surely deny us any chance of success and would put the future of the group in danger," Fottorino and his deputy, David Guiraud, said in a statement published on the website of Le Monde.

Unions said the proposed cuts were unacceptable.

Le Monde has announced losses of 20 million euros (31.4 million pounds) for 2007, after registering a loss of 14.3 million euros in 2006. Its debt mountain stands at 150 million euros.

Fottorino said he wanted the group to balance its books in 2009 and register a profit in 2010. To do that, it needed to find 15 million euros of structural savings, he wrote.

Amongst his proposals were the sale of non-strategic assets and a plan to shed 130 jobs, mostly in Le Monde's newsroom which employs some 340 journalists. Fottorino said there would be a voluntary redundancy plan and forced lay offs.

The group's journalists hold a blocking stake in Le Monde and could veto the plan. However, the paper's financial woes mean major shareholders like aerospace-to-media conglomerate Lagardere might have to pump cash into the company to help it pay its bills and will thereby dilute the workers' holding.

Le Monde (The World) was founded at the time of the liberation from Nazi occupation in 1944 and has become France's most influential daily.

Proud of its quirks, Le Monde maintains its character as an evening paper, appearing around lunchtime in Paris and dated the following day, when it becomes available in the provinces.

It's daily circulation totaled some 310,000 in 2007, marginally up on 2006 levels, but not enough to turn a profit.

"The particularly gloomy outlook for the world economy, the weakness of French growth and the slowdown...in the advertising market gives us no room for maneuver," said Fottorino.

Many other French newspapers are also facing financial problems and many of the dailies chalked up losses last year.

(Reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Jon Boyle)