SOS Racisme alerts rights defender after suspicions of discrimination against black employees at Roissy airport

SOS Racisme indicated on Friday that it had contacted the rights defender over suspicions of discrimination against black employees within the security company Watch Over at Paris Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport, which the Aéroports de Paris (ADP) group denies.

In a press release entitled “were black employees hidden for a TF1 filming at Roissy airport? », the association announces that it has contacted the rights defender “to request that an investigation be opened”.

SOS Racisme reports that members of the social and economic committee (CSE) of the company Watch Over (WO group, ADP subcontractor) had alerted it in September of “facts likely to constitute particularly worrying racial discrimination: black employees were allegedly deliberately excluded by this company during filming at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport” in August.

Through job reassignments, these employees would have been “removed from the camera field because of their skin color during filming,” the association indicates in its press release.

ADP denies

Le Canard chainé detailed these accusations in an article on Wednesday. The weekly also assured that seven agents had had to leave the company, following pressure, including “five dismissed for bogus reasons”.

SOS Racisme explains that “many victims testify to this sidelining and retaliatory measures adopted against them after they denounced the facts to their superiors”.

Following the article in Le Canard Enchaîné, Groupe ADP denied “with the greatest firmness having given any instructions whatsoever aimed at discriminating or prohibiting any personnel from participating in a press operation last August at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport”.

In a press release sent to AFP, ADP ensures that the only criteria it applies to respond to the press are “voluntariness and the correlation between the journalist’s subject and the expertise of the employee(s).

ADP indicates that it requested information from Watch Over and concludes that “their restitution of the facts denies any initiative of discrimination on their part during this press briefing”.