Puy-de-Dôme: Carrefour fined 50,000 euros after the suicide of an employee

Europe 1 with AFP 07:54, February 08, 2022

The Carrefour company was sentenced Monday to a fine of 50,000 euros for "involuntary homicide" by the criminal court of Clermont-Ferrand, after the suicide of an employee in Thiers in 2017. The sign has the obligation to display this decision in all supermarkets in Puy-de-Dôme for one month.

The court also sentenced a fund manager to a four-month suspended prison sentence for "moral harassment" and "manslaughter".

The store manager, also prosecuted, was released.

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A sentence below the requisitions of the public prosecutor

The sentence is below the requisitions of the public prosecutor who had demanded, at the hearing of January 27, a fine of 100,000 euros against Carrefour and six months in prison suspended against the manager.

"My reaction is mixed, even if there is a conviction and Carrefour's responsibility is recognized. The goal was to have a conviction, but there is white-collar delinquency, which causes the death of an employee and is sentenced to a fine of 50,000 euros, a peccadillo for them", estimated the lawyer for the family of the victim, Me Clémence Marcelot.

“The main thing is that Carrefour be condemned and the civil parties compensated”, declared Dominique Holle, representative of the CGT who had constituted a civil party but was dismissed for damages.

During the hearing, the lawyers for Carrefour and the manager, Me Emmanuel Daoud and Me Bertrand Chautard, pleaded for release.

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The victim had alleged moral harassment

On April 3, 2017, Viviane Monier, 46, ended her life in Vollore-Ville (Puy-de-Dôme).

This hostess, employed for 27 years at the Carrefour store in Thiers, had left a letter questioning her professional environment and the moral harassment of which she said she was the victim.

A labor inspection investigation had corroborated these acts of harassment and the company was condemned for "inexcusable fault" by the social pole of the judicial court, on November 25.

“It results from the hearing of the employees that the general atmosphere in the Thiers store was very bad and has been for several years”, underlined the judgment.

"The organization put in place by the management has caused tensions between colleagues", added the Social pole, evoking "situations of favoritism" between the hostesses or on the contrary "reprisals (change of schedule, surveillance, refusal to 'grant of leave)' by management and the manager against other employees.

The minutes of several meetings of the CHSCT (health, safety and working conditions committee) had mentioned psychosocial risks.