2023-05-18 13:00:05
“My understanding was that you were ready to give up your union activities for an interesting position. What is it exactly? » “You are prepared to reduce the scope of your union activities if the position offered requires it. » These emails, sent in 2007 and 2008 by a line manager to Jean-Pierre Lamonnier, an executive at Société Générale, notably made it possible to prove the union discrimination to which he was subjected. “These are very interesting pieces, because obtaining a promotion is conditional on the fact of no longer being a trade unionist. That means you can’t do both at the same time, that’s what makes the discrimination exist.”explains his lawyer, Mr.e Xavier Sauvignet.
Elected since 2001 from the National Syndicate of Banking and Credit (SNB), the main organization of employees in this bank, Mr. Lamonnier, who retired in 2019, had his company condemned on appeal, on April 19, 2023, against him. pay nearly 600,000 euros, because he had been the victim of union discrimination during all these years.
Prohibited since the Auroux laws of 1982, union discrimination is registered in the labor code (articles L.1132-1 and L.2141-5): the employer must ensure that the exercise of representative functions does not influence the development of the employee’s career. This concerns the entire employment relationship, from recruitment to remuneration and professional training.
Union discrimination is a phenomenon that is difficult to measure, but concerns nearly half (46%) of union members, who believe that they have already been discriminated against during their career because of their union activity, according to a barometer by the Defender of Rights and of the International Labor Organization published in 2019. In 2021, 5.5% of referrals to the Defender of Rights relate to trade union activities, which makes it the fifth factor of discrimination noted, in particular ahead of age or sex.
Lack of evolution
Most of the time, this discrimination results in a lack of professional development. For 51% of people exercising or having exercised union activity, the latter represented a brake on their professional development (in terms of qualification, advancement, grade, etc.).
This is precisely the case of Jean-Pierre Lamonnier: since taking up his union mandates, this former chartered accountant has remained stuck at level I of the company’s collective agreement (on a scale ranging from the letters A to L) for twenty-two years. “Normally, it takes four to five years before going to the next level, we found this average time in the social balance sheets”, says his lawyer. In 2016, when he was 62 years old, the average age of colleagues in his category was around 40 years old.
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