I am “a little shared“, reacted, Friday, September 30 on franceinfo, Patrick Ackermann, of the Sud-PTT union, which is at the origin of the legal complaint against the ex-executives of France Telecom whose sentences have been reduced by the court of call from Paris.
Didier Lombard, the ex-CEO and Louis-Pierre Wenès, ex-number 2, are sentenced to one year in prison suspended. They must pay a fine of 15,000 euros. At first instance, they had been sentenced to one year’s imprisonment, including eight months suspended, and a fine of 15,000 euros for their “preeminent role” in the establishment of a policy of downsizing.
“The decision of the Court of Appeal makes it possible to turn this page“, reacts on franceinfo Sébastien Crozier, president of the CFE-CGC Orange union. For the trade unionist, this sentence confirms that the “maximization of profits cannot be done at the expense of personnel and management cannot be done through social violence”. He hopes that this court decision will cause other leaders to reflect.
Despite these less severe sentences, Patrick Ackermann of the Sud-PTT union says to himself “very proud to have fought for so many years against a CAC 40 company“. He recognizes that “it was still quite difficult to hope to win on the issue of moral and institutional harassment. We won very clearly in the first instance, which was an exemplary judgment.”
For the representative of the Sud-PTT union, “that leaders only have a reprieve is shocking, but the fact remains that it is a historical judgment. France Telecom case law exists“, he congratulates himself. “It is a union battle that we will have to wage. It is up to the living forces of the working world and the world of workers to try to go further“, in this fight, he explains.
On a potential cassation appeal, Sébastien Crozier of the CFE-CGC doubts that “the justice of our country does not recognize this widespread harassment and extreme violence” and add “it is essential that the page be turned both for the victims still surviving and both for the families of the victims”.