It’s a bit of a double jeopardy for the 300 employees of Scopelec Sud-Est, 212 of whom work in the Var. The subsidiary of Scopelec SA, the largest cooperative society (Scop) in France specializing in the installation of fiber and networks for telecoms placed in liquidation on December 28 in Lyon, has also just been liquidated… While unlike its parent company, it was “in bonus”.
Above all, its employees are not part of the takeover plan by the Var SME Circet (Solliès-Pont), which was appointed on December 28 by the Lyon Commercial Court to integrate almost all of the subsidiaries into its fold. of the cooperative, i.e. 1,049 employees out of 2,300.
Why? “Circet also wanted to take us over, but as this company already covers many markets in the region, the Competition Authority required it to take over only part of our subsidiary, in this case the Var but not the Alpes- Maritimes. To do this, the customer, Orange, would have had to agree to split the market for our sector in two, which was not the case”, says Cécile Carpi, deputy secretary of the CSE of Scopelec Sud-Est and Unsa union representative.
Information that Orange, already very heckled in this case, did not wish to confirm or deny this Friday evening, nor comment. Because for months, the unions of Scopelec, which should have celebrated its 50th anniversary this year, have been pointing to the behavior of the main client, Orange, which by reviewing its subcontracting contracts, in November 2021, redistributed the cards in all of France between different operators.
“We were very little diversified”
“They represented 40% of our turnover, we were very little diversified”, adds the staff representative for whom Orange is clearly responsible for the financial difficulties of the parent company, which had led to a first PSE last spring. Scopelec Sud-Est had already been affected, losing the markets of Hautes-Alpes and Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, but retaining that of Var and gaining that of Alpes-Maritimes. “The management had then offered the 51 Alpine employees internal mobility but they refused and were dismissed for real and serious cause”.
Those from the Var and the Alpes-Maritimes had continued to work on the Orange sites. Until the end of December. “We were asked not to intervene anymore. The colleagues came until January 4, they played cards…” says, bitter, Cécile Carpi.
For its part, Orange indicates that it has no other priority than to satisfy its customers, on the territory, and has already taken measures to temporarily ensure the activity initially provided by the Scopelec teams. “particularly by mobilizing internal resources and using other partners”. Because if Orange wanted to review the map of its subcontractors, a year ago, it was to meet the quality requirements of end customers in the deployment of fiber. And precisely, the employees of Scopelec Sud-est had kept their contract. So today they don’t understand why they lost their jobs.
“Now they are receiving competitive calls to recruit them, but the conditions will not be the same”, still denounces the chosen one. Hard to understand indeed. And above all to accept.
