Scopelec, a subcontractor of the incumbent operator, is requesting a backup procedure. He accuses his main client of being the cause of his difficulties.
Scopelec, one of Orange’s main subcontractors, is sounding the alarm. On Friday, Scopelec announced that it had been placed in safeguard proceedings by the Commercial Court of Lyon, at its request. ” At 1is April, unless the situation evolves in a favorable direction, more than 1,000 employees could find themselves without activity “, alert Scopelec, which considers “to have received only partial and inconclusive answers” from its major client. Marc Blanchet, Technical and Information System Director Orange France, responds to the accusations in an interview with Le Figaro.
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The origin of the dispute between the two companies dates back to July, after Scopelec lost some of its contracts in the context of a call for tenders launched by Orange a few months earlier. However, the company is currently experiencing no cash flow problems.
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Le Figaro. – To what extent is Orange responsible for the current situation?
Marc Blanchet.- Scopelec remains a large company and an important subcontractor of Orange. This year we are going to buy him for 200 million euros in services, despite the change of contract. This is the equivalent of a workload for 3000 people for one year. It is rather an evolution of activity, certain geographical areas have been lost by Scopelec within the framework of our calls for tenders. Others have been won. But it is not a sudden stoppage of activity for this company either, which still works for us, for other operators and for local authorities within the framework of public initiative networks (RIP).
Why did Orange decide to terminate this contract?
Orange outsources network upkeep, intervention and maintenance work at customer sites to around ten companies. This represents approximately 14,000 jobs, necessarily local due to the nature of the interventions, with subcontractors in the territory. For these activities, we had contracts dating from 2015 and considered that they should be transformed for two reasons. The first is the evolution of the nature of the services, in 2015 mainly concerned our copper network. Now the fiber predominates. Then, we increased our level of requirements on the quality of service, the speed of recovery, the holding of appointments… to meet the expectations of our own customers. We informed our subcontractors in 2018 of this overhaul. It has been four years since the term of the current contracts was set at 2022. The call for tenders was launched a year ago. No contract is granted to the companies in place. Some of the results were known in July and Scopelec had known for eight months that it would not be retained in Occitania. The rest was fixed in November. Scopelec reinforced its positions in the south-east of France and lost other areas. Their market share at Orange has roughly been halved, for reasons of non-quality. This reason had long been known to Scopelec, which knew that it was in difficulty on these criteria.
What about the 1000 jobs impacted?
I would not comment on the figures given by Scopelec. Orange cannot interfere in the management of suppliers, but we do everything to support them, to ensure that employees find work with Scopelec or with other players in the market. The Interministerial Committee for Industrial Restructuring was contacted by Scopelec to help employees find work. For example, Solution 30 can recruit employees in Occitania. We have organized multi-party meetings to encourage this type of solution. But it is primarily the responsibility of Scopelec. The ball is in his court. Especially since it remains one of Orange’s six main subcontractors and Orange is only one of Scopelec’s customers. In any case, it is in no way for a client to finance a restructuring plan. Our wish is to facilitate the evolution of these contracts as well as possible, provided that the management of Scopelec seizes the perches which are stretched out to it.