A trial of involving Adecco France and two of its former directors over hiring discrimination complaints resumes Thursday before the Paris judicial court, according to Swiss news agency Awp Finanznachrichten AG (AWP Financial News).

Adecco France has been accused by former employees and anti-racist associations of having set up a system of discrimination based on skin colour through a file containing the names of 500 temporary workers between 1997 and 2001. Adecco, as a legal entity, Olivier P. and Mathieu C., former directors of the agency targeted by the complaint, are accused of discrimination and registration “because of origin, nationality or ethnicity.”

The firm had faced the Paris judicial court on 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. 

The two men and the Adecco representative rejected the accusations.

The long-running issue goes back as far as 2001, when a judicial investigation was opened in Paris following a complaint from SOS Racisme.

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.

Present at the hearing in September 2023, the whistle-blower looked back on his six months spent at the agency as an intern, where he said he trained to "put an indication" for each candidate. “When the person presented well, I had to put PR 1, a little less I had to put PR 2, and for a person of colour, a black person, I had to put PR 4,” he said.

Adecco said it recognises the existence of a ‘PR 4’ coding but disputes the fact that it is a reference to the skin color of temporary workers. According to the company, people classified as ‘PR 4’ were those likely to ‘have difficulties in an assignment’. Among these ‘difficulties’, a former director mentioned a person who does not ‘present’ well, who does not know how to read or write or who does not speak French.

Adecco faces a fine of €1.65 million. The two former agency directors risk a fine of €330,000 and seven years in prison.