Adecco France was fined €50,000 yesterday by a Paris Criminal Court for hiring discrimination and the racial registration of 500 temporary workers between 1997 and 2001, reports Le Monde and news agency AFP. 

Former employees and anti-racist associations accused Adecco France and two of its directors of discrimination and registration “because of origin, nationality or ethnicity.” The two men and the Adecco representative rejected the accusations.

According to La Tribune, the Paris Criminal Court made its decision based on “a body of evidence” making it possible to establish “the existence of ethnic registration and discrimination” on the part of Adecco France against some of its employees. 

The defendants, Olivier Poulin and Mathieu Charbon, former directors of Adecco France in Montparnasse, were each sentenced to a fine of €10,000, of which €7,000 was suspended. The court concluded that if they were not at the origin of this “filtering based on skin colour”, then they had done nothing to put an end to it.

According to Reuters, the court also ruled that Adecco and the two managers must jointly pay €1,200 damages to each of the 20 victims that were able to identify, and €20,000 in damages to each of the three organisations that filed the lawsuit against it.

The long-running issue goes back as far as 2001, when a judicial investigation was opened in Paris following a complaint from SOS Racisme. Adecco had faced the Paris judicial court in September 2023. Prior to that, in March 2021, the Paris Court of Appeal had ruled to send Adecco France and two former directors of the firm to trial. In January of this year the trial resumed before the Paris judicial court.

SOS Racisme had been alerted by a former employee responsible for recruitment at the Adecco’s Montparnasse office of a classification of candidates with a code "PR 4" to identify people of colour.

During the trial, the defendants argued that the “PR 4” criterion did not qualify skin colour but “a mix of the candidate's professional experience and interpersonal skills”, in particular their mastery of French.

“I have never condoned or practiced discrimination, there is a huge paradox, I have spent my life fighting against discrimination ,” Poulin, now retired, said.

The prosecutor described the director’s comments as “fancy explanations”, telling him, “you have to want to believe it.”

The public prosecutor had sought a fine of €50,000 against Adecco and a three-month suspended prison sentence for the two former agency directors.

A spokesperson for Adecco told Reuters in response to the ruling that the company has put in place anti-discrimination policies over the last few years and "will do everything to make sure that such a situation doesn't happen again.”

Samuel Thomas, founder of French anti-discrimination group Maison des Potes, which filed the initial complaint, told Reuters he welcomed the court ruling but was disappointed by the level of the fines. "For a real awakening among companies to block this discrimination, we need the penalties to be dissuasive,” Thomas said.

SIA reached out to Adecco France for further comment.

Update: Adecco France said it takes note of this decision.

 "We have been pursuing a resolute anti-discrimination policy for several years. All our employees receive training when they join the company and on an ongoing basis. Our practices are regularly assessed through testing carried out by external service providers," the company told SIA. "The fight against discrimination is a daily battle to which our employees are committed on a daily basis. We will continue to strengthen and continuously improve our practices in favour of an inclusive company."