Scopelec, the Orange subcontractor, is preparing the redundancy of 800 employees

Europe 1 with AFP 11:14 a.m., April 21, 2022

Orange subcontractor Scopelec, in difficulty since the loss of a major contract with the incumbent telecom operator, is preparing a social plan which could lead to the redundancy of 800 people, the company said on Thursday. 'AFP, confirming information from

.

"The management announced the plan to bring together the social partners in the coming days to prepare the implementation of a PSE (plan to safeguard employment, editor's note) which would concern 800 jobs" out of 3,600, said a door - word of the company, the first cooperative in France in terms of number of employees.

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No warning signs of a loss of business volume

A demonstration of Scopelec employees must also be held Thursday at Place de la Bastille in Paris.

The company ensured for Orange the installation of optical fiber and the maintenance of the copper network, within the framework of a contract which expired at the end of March, and which represented 40% of its turnover estimated at 475 million euros. euros in 2021. The subcontractor, who was notified in mid-November of the loss of this contract, believes that he had no warning signs from Orange about the loss of this volume of business, and does not have had time to prepare for it.

Since November when 1,800 threatened jobs were mentioned, "700 people have either been reclassified internally, or left for other companies that have won the markets, or left the very field of telecoms", continued the spokesperson for Scopelec.

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An open letter to candidates Macron and Le Pen

The company's associate employees published an open letter in several newspapers on Thursday to presidential candidates Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, as well as candidates in the legislative elections, calling on them to act to avoid "one of the heaviest social plans that France has known for months".

The company, in the safeguard procedure for a month, requests that Orange "really support it in (its) social restructuring" and finance part of the PSE, and that the State shareholder "play the role of impartial arbiter" .

She intends to appeal the decision rendered Friday, April 15 by the judge in chambers of the Paris Commercial Court, who had dismissed her request for extension of the contract with Orange, and "will also assign Orange on the merits because the rupture commercial contracts does not seem to us to have respected the rules of commercial law", she indicated.