(AFP / LOIC VENANCE)
A fine of 50,000 euros was requested on Friday against the global temporary employment giant Adecco, tried before the Paris criminal court, more than 20 years after the events, for discrimination in hiring and racial registration.
In addition to this fine of 50,000 euros targeting Adecco France, the prosecution requested a three-month suspended prison sentence for two of its former agency directors.
The judgment is expected on March 13.
In very technical requisitions, the prosecutor noted the difficulty of judging facts which date back almost 24 years.
“It’s a maddening delay”, underlined the representative of the prosecution, recalling that the law had evolved considerably since the facts and that “it is often impossible to prove discrimination, particularly in the field of work”.
The Franco-Swiss group is accused by former employees and anti-racist associations of having set up a system of discrimination based on skin color, through the “PR 4” file, containing the names of 500 temporary workers, the majority of whom black.
At the hearing, the defendants, Olivier P. and Mathieu C., argued that the “PR 4” criterion did not qualify skin color but “a mix of the candidate’s professional experience and interpersonal skills”. notably his mastery of French.
The existence of the “PR 4” file is “not contestable”, indicated the prosecutor while admitting that “its interpretation is contested”.
However, she stressed, “all the testimonies (of the victims) are perfectly consistent in saying that these were criteria based on skin color.”
She considered that the explanations given by the defendants at the hearing to explain the criteria of this file were “fanciful”. “You have to want to believe it,” she quipped.
Between 1997 and 2001, the agency that the two defendants managed in the Montparnasse district of Paris allegedly had some 500 black temporary workers, excluded from certain missions.
“I have never condoned or practiced discrimination, there is a huge paradox, I have spent my life fighting against discrimination”, explained Olivier P., now retired after 17 years, at the bar at Adecco.
His ex-colleague Mathieu C. did not say anything else during his hearing.
Their lawyers pleaded for “unscrupulous acquittal”, categorically refuting the existence of a file based on racial considerations.
“Adecco has always fought against discrimination. It is in the DNA of the company,” Gérald Jasmin, general manager of Adecco France, said at the helm.
“Why are 95% of the people in the PR 4 file black?” asks a lawyer for the civil parties. “I don’t have the answer,” concedes the CEO.
A lawyer for the civil parties is ironic when noting the presence on the public benches of Sibeth Ndiaye, former government spokesperson, now general secretary of the Adecco group.
– “It hurts me” –
In 2001, a judicial investigation was opened in Paris after a complaint from SOS Racisme.
The association had been alerted by a former employee responsible for recruitment at the Adecco Montparnasse agency of a classification of candidates with a code “PR 4” to identify, according to him, people of color.
“When the person presented well, I had to put PR 1, a little less I had to put PR 2, and for a person of color, a black person, I had to put PR 4”, detailed the whistleblower on the stand .
The Montparnasse agency, specializing in catering, worked in particular with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Eurodisney and the Société des wagons-lits.
Of the approximately 500 people listed in the “PR 4” file, barely twenty filed a civil suit.
Only three of them agreed to briefly testify on the stand. “Learning that I had been discriminated against, it hurt me, it hurt me (…). I cannot reduce myself to the color of my skin,” Assa C said, in tears.