VIDEO. In Ain, this bakery is fighting for their employee threatened with expulsion

“15 days ago, we received this famous letter from the prefecture asking us to put an end to his contract and giving us 15 days to have our opinion, a right of reply”, explains Frédéric Peuillon, manager of the Lou Pan bakery, in Bourg-en-Bresse, in Ain. He is the employer of Mory Mara, a 20-year-old baker of Guinean origin. Since 2021, he has been threatened with expulsion from French territory. But his collaborators do not want to let this pass. “We would like to hire him permanently, so that he can settle in France, have papers, pass the permit. Here, living a normal life as a 20-year-old kid, what”, adds Laetitia Peuillon, sales manager at the bakery.

“The bosses need these young people”

“Now, it’s been almost 3 years, 3 and a half years that he works alone in the afternoon, that he manages the store, the cooking, the production of the croissants, the setting up for the next day so that I can open, me, the store”, explains Rémi Panettier, baker and colleague of Mory. “At the moment, it’s difficult for me, because when the job you do, it’s been 4 years, you get up in the night at 4am, 2am to come to work and you are told to leave this job, I can say it’s hard”, thinks Mory Mara.

The absence of the young man could really put the bakery in difficulty. But it is not the only company in this case, as explained by Patricia Hyvernat, president of Patron.nes Solidaires. “Producers, artisans, bosses need these young people. Getting them to leave for their country is not going to solve the problem at all, because, indeed, they will have to leave, but many others will arrive because there are earthquakes, because there are more more misery in distant countries and that these young people will come, will come back or others will arrive. And that we will have to accompany them. We can no longer ignore them at all, we will have to accompany them.”