A Parisian agency is accused of having registered hundreds of temporary workers because of their skin color, between 1997 and 2001. Anti-racist associations fought to obtain a trial, which opens this Thursday.
Salamata remains stunned at the idea of having been listed by a temp company because she is black. “I know there is racism in France, but I didn’t think it could be so accepted”, confides the forty-year-old. She is one of the hundreds of men and women who registered, between 1997 and 2001, with the Parisian agency Adecco Montparnasse. It is accused of having listed 500 temporary workers “because of origin, nationality or ethnicity” during this period.
The two former directors of this agency and the company itself are on trial before the Paris Criminal Court, Thursday September 28, after more than twenty years of a fierce legal battle, led by associations fighting against discrimination, SOS Racism and the National Federation of Friends’ Houses.
An “ethnic sorting” denounced by an intern
The affair began in September 2000, when Gérald Roffat, trainee in charge of recruitment, denounced to SOS Racisme the practices of this agency in the 14th arrondissement of the capital, which he had just left. He claims that at Adecco Montparnasse, which specializes in recruitment in the hotel and restaurant industry, black employees are placed in a separate category.
It describes a vast system of discrimination, in which the recruitment manager associates a code with each temporary worker: “PR1”, for “very good physical and oral presentation” ; “PR2”, for “average presentation”; “PR3″, which has not been clearly defined; and “PR4”, i.e. “black people”, summarizes Samuel Thomas, at the time president of SOS Racisme. It was he who collected the testimony of Gérald Roffat and led the entire procedure. When an Adecco client was looking for a temporary worker, “he could then mention: ‘No PR4′”relates the ex-intern of the agency in his written testimony, where he denounces a “ethnic sorting”.
Companies using this agency “did not want black people to be recruited into positions that were too visible, in direct contact with their customers”, explicit Samuel Thomas. SOS Racisme filed a complaint in early 2001 for “racial discrimination in hiring”, and a judicial investigation was opened.
Recorded confessions
Initially, the procedure moves quickly. On January 30, 2001, a bailiff came to the Adecco Montparnasse premises to be given the list of “PR4” temporary workers. In February, the labor inspectorate in turn went to the agency, and noted, by consulting the folders containing the photos of the temporary workers, that those whose files bear the mention “PR4” are almost all black, and that none are white.
During this visit, the director of the agency, Olivier Poulin, admitted “that there is a phenomenon of rejection and racial discrimination in hiring in the daily demands of some of our clients. As a result, we try to delegate our temporary workers with the ‘PR4’ criterion to other more ‘welcoming’ clients ‘”. Comments recorded in the labor inspection report placed in the file, which franceinfo was able to consult. During the investigation, several former employees of the agency also confirmed the existence of “the equation ‘PR4 = temporary workers of color'”it is specified.
In February, again, and with the complicity of SOS Racisme, France 3 carried out an interview with the Ile-de-France regional director of Adecco, still archived on YouTube. In front of the cameras, she categorically denies the existence of a “separate file” discriminatory. But when SOS Racisme questions her on a hidden camera, she admits that “the list entered by the bailiff exists”. And continues: “It’s true that it’s a list of people of color. It’s not a list of discrimination: these guys, they work, they even work a lot. On the other hand, in the morning, we don’t send them to the pipebreaker on certain sites”. Both sequences are broadcast by the channel.
A conviction in 2007 for similar facts
In the months that followed, testimonies from Adecco employees and ex-employees piled up to denounce methods they considered discriminatory. In February 2001, SOS Racisme was contacted by a former recruitment manager who had worked for several agencies in the temp group, who claimed that one of the company’s largest clients, in the entertainment sector, and for which she worked between 1997 and 1999, asked him “mainly ‘European type’ staff”. During a police hearing, the minutes of which franceinfo consulted, she specified: “For non-Europeans, I had a quota of around 20%.”
The same month, the association received another testimony, this time concerning L’Oréal. A former employee of Districom, a former subsidiary of Adecco, explains that the previous year, in 2000, more than 200 presenters had to be recruited for operations to promote the beauty giant’s hair products. To do this, the director of Districom had sent a fax to the parent company, Adecco, stipulating the company’s criteria for candidates: she talks about profiles. “BBR”For “Blue White Red”, in reference to the French flag. A term which implies “white French candidates”summarizes Samuel Thomas, who filed a complaint on behalf of SOS Racisme following this testimony.
In 2006, the Paris criminal court exonerated Adecco, Districom and L’Oréal. But on appeal the following year, the three companies suffered a major setback and were ultimately convicted of racial discrimination. “A historic victory”, then congratulates Samuel Thomas in Release greeting “an exemplary trial”.
A dragging procedure and a new defense
The procedure concerning the Montparnasse agency was not as diligent. In July 2006, the director of the agency, Olivier Poulin, reconsidered his statements. He assures, through his lawyers, that the mention “PR4” would in fact have been used to identify the people “having difficulty reading and/or counting well, and/or difficulty adapting to the position”. Samuel Thomas, the president of SOS Racisme, then provided the judges with the diplomas of the members of this file whom he managed to contact. “Not only do those we call on the phone speak French very well, but they all have BEP, professional baccalaureate, DESS…”he explains to franceinfo.
In the years that followed, justice dragged on and judges came and went. “All the evidence is there, but Adecco is an extremely powerful company, very well supported legally”, analyzes Samuel Thomas. He notes that the company “refused the requested investigative measures”and regrets “that the investigating judge refused to have them executed”.
In 2017, it was a cold shower for SOS Racisme and the National Federation of Maisons des Potes (FNMDP), a network of associations which had joined the procedure in the meantime: the judge ordered a dismissal of the case, considering that “the temporary workers appearing [sur le fichier ‘PR4’] had obtained a certain number of missions, despite their nationality or skin color. But it is contradicted by the investigating chamber, which in 2018 requested the indictment of the company Adecco France, and of the two successive directors of the Parisian agency, Mathieu Charbon and Olivier Poulin.
In February 2021, twenty years after SOS Racisme’s complaint against the Montparnasse agency, the Paris Court of Appeal finally decided to refer it to the criminal court. It will take two more years for a date to be set for the trial.
“Hurt to be called illiterate”
Since then, Samuel Thomas, now president of the Maisons des Potes network, has been trying to find the hundreds of men and women listed by the Adecco Montparnasse agency. He is helped by student lawyers and activists from the association, who base themselves on the listing seized in 2001. But the task is far from easy: most of the telephone numbers are out of date and “90% of letters came back to us”, regrets Samuel Thomas. The members of the association went to the homes of the remaining 10% of recipients.
Despite their efforts, many victims remain untraceable, and will not be able to receive compensation if Adecco is convicted. “We managed to contact only twenty people out of the 500, fifteen of whom became civil parties”, he said. Salamata is one of them. At the time, she had “between 18 and 20 years old”, lived in Normandy, and took advantage of vacations with his grandfather in Paris to do some temporary work. “Adecco found me a job at Flunch, clearing tables. I was an accounting student and I needed to make some money on the side”, she describes to franceinfo. She now works with disabled children in a nursery school, and will not be able to attend the trial. But she will follow it carefully and hope that Adecco “will finally recognize the facts.”
Michèle, 41, intends to be present on the bench of the civil parties, “the key days of the trial”. This payroll manager says she felt “humiliated” when she learned that people annotated “PR4” were considered by Adecco Montparnasse as “illiterate”. “I was really hurt to be called illiterate. I intend to show that this is false by providing my testimony”declares this mother of two children. “I also do it for them. I tell myself that tomorrow the same thing could happen to them.”