This is a legal first: La Poste was ordered, Tuesday, December 5, to improve the implementation of the 2017 law on the duty of vigilance of companies in matters of human and environmental risks, in a case involving employment of undocumented workers by subcontractors.
The group, whose capital is 66% controlled by the Caisse des Dépôts and 34% by the State, will therefore have to improve its ” risk mapping “ and the monitoring and alert systems intended to complement it. At the origin of this decision, the formal notice to La Poste, in 2020, by the SUD-PTT union, which considered that the documents published by the company did not meet legal requirements, among other things in terms of recourse to outsourcing.
“We were alerted in 2019 by a collective from the Chronopost platform in Alfortville (Val-de-Marne) to the fact that undocumented immigrants, subcontractors of the Derichebourg company, were working there night shifts. exchanging papers and badgesexplains Nicolas Galépides, federal manager of SUD-PTT. And two years later, the same pattern occurred again at DPD, a subsidiary of La Poste. »
“Procedures for evaluating subcontractors”
On the use of undocumented immigrants, the Paris judicial court notes, among other things, that the risk mapping established by La Poste “in no way highlights the existence of risks linked to illegal work”which justifies requiring it to establish “procedures for evaluating subcontractors based on the specific risks identified”. “The message sent to the company by the court is: ‘You have to get to work’”concludes Mr. Galépides.
The court, however, rejected several requests from SUD-PTT. In particular, he refused to force La Poste to make public the list of its subcontractors and suppliers and to impose on it the implementation of measures to prevent hidden work.
Also rejected was the union’s request for a financial penalty of 50,000 euros per day of delay in improving the vigilance plan, the court taking note of a “notable development, as part of a dynamic improvement process” since 2021.
The public group, which took note of the judgment without immediately commenting on a possible appeal, says it regrets that the 2017 law has not “is the subject of no implementing decree or guidelines, leaving the companies subject to it in great legal uncertainty” pending the adoption of a European directive in this area.
