INTERVIEW
Following a large survey conducted by the Ministry of Labor with a third of the largest French firms, seven companies listed on the stock market, including Air France, Renault or Accor, are suspected since Thursday of discrimination in hiring. At the microphone of Wendy Bouchard, Dominique Sopo, president of SOS Racisme, affirms that the government could go even further than this investigation.
At the request of Emmanuel Macron, around forty companies were subjected to testing, a method popularized with SOS Racisme, which consists in identifying discrimination. These companies were not chosen by chance but "because they were part of large French companies", explains Dominique Sopo, who welcomes this initiative. "In France, it was a first for the government to take advantage of this technique which reveals the scourge of racial discrimination in hiring," he conceded, ensuring that they can "break lives". .
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Despite this advance, Dominique Sopo is not fully convinced. "What we are asking the government to do is go much further," he said. According to him, "the study took a long time to come out when it was ready for several months". An expectation which is explained, according to him, by "procrastination about whether or not to give the names of discriminating companies".
Forcing companies
Dominique Sopo also thinks that discrimination, in particular racial, is still taboo in politics. "We are in a country which does not really have a public policy to combat racial discrimination", regrets Dominique Sopo, for whom this subject "has disappeared very strongly from the public agenda for several years". Since the results of the survey were released, no new government measures have been announced to combat discrimination.
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To stop this scourge, Dominique Sopo pleads for more "coercion" so that "discrimination has a cost": "for example, that companies convicted of racial discrimination are deprived of public contracts", he illustrates.
President Dominique Sopo says that the government's response is not satisfactory and even contributes to the trivialization of racism. "If we apply what we say about racial discrimination to all other forms of delinquency, people who come for theft or assault would be surprised by their welcome at the police station." SOS Racisme is looking for a solution to reduce racist attacks. The association is thinking in particular of a barometer to "be able to make comparisons year after year with a national scale".