We had to wait more than twenty years. The global temporary employment giant Adecco was sentenced on Wednesday March 13 by the Paris Criminal Court to a fine of 50,000 euros for discrimination in hiring and the racial registration of five hundred temporary workers between 1997 and 2001.
The Franco-Swiss temporary employment company and two of its executives were sued by former employees and anti-racist associations. They accused Adecco of having put in place a system of discrimination based on skin color, through the “PR 4” file (for people of color), containing the names of predominantly black temporary workers.
The defendants, Olivier P. and Mathieu C., former directors of the Montparnasse temporary employment agency, were sentenced to a fine of 10,000 euros, of which 7,000 were suspended. The court recognized that if they were not at the origin of this “filtering based on skin color”, they had done nothing to stop it.
A system of discrimination
Between 1997 and 2001, the agency they managed in the Montparnasse district of Paris allegedly recorded some 500 black temporary workers by excluding them from certain missions. Specializing in catering, the agency worked in particular with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Eurodisney and the sleeping car company.
During the trial, the defendants 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. “I have never condoned or practiced discrimination, there is a huge paradox, I have spent my life fighting against discrimination”, Olivier P., now retired after 17 years at Adecco, explained at the bar. Explinations “fanciful”according to the prosecutor. “You have to want to believe it”she then quipped.
A judicial investigation was opened in 2001 in Paris after a complaint from the SOS Racisme association, which had been alerted by a former employee responsible for recruitment in the same agency. The public prosecutor had requested a fine of 50,000 euros against the temp company and a three-month suspended prison sentence for the two former agency directors.