Dan Israel

Après un passage par Capital, 20 minutes, LCP puis, plus longuement, le site arretsurimages.net, j’ai rejoint Mediapart en novembre 2012, pour m’intéresser aux entreprises au sens large.

J’ai d’abord développé une certaine obsession pour l’évasion fiscale et l’optimisation du même nom, et je me consacre désormais au monde du travail et à ses enjeux, ainsi qu’aux mobilisations sociales : prud’hommes, chômage, retraites, manifs...

Je suis le coordinateur du service économie-social de Mediapart depuis septembre 2021.

Contacts

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@dan_mdpt

Declaration of interest

In the interest of transparency towards its readers, Mediapart’s journalists fill out and make public since 2018 a declaration of interests on the model of the one filled out by members of parliament and senior civil servants with the High Authority for Transparency and Public Life (HATVP), a body created in 2014 after Mediapart’s revelations on the Cahuzac affair.

Consult my declaration of interests

All his articles

  • Why the French government must drop its brutal and unfair pension reforms

    Politique — Opinion

    The pension changes proposed by President Emmanuel Macron – the fourth reform in twenty years and which in this case will push the retirement age back from 62 to 64 - will leave no one better off. The demonstrators who have taken to the streets on January 19th and January 31st have fully grasped that point, say Mediapart's Stéphane Alliès, Carine Fouteau and Dan Israel in this op-ed article. They argue that the stubbornness shown by the government, which looks set to force the reforms through the French Parliament, represents a danger to democracy.

    by Stéphane Alliès, Carine Fouteau and Dan Israel

  • Why Macron's decision to axe French TV licence is a threat to public broadcast news

    France — Opinion

    On Saturday July 23rd MP's voted to abolish France's television licence, a tax that funds public broadcasting and which has existed since 1948. It currently raises 3.2 billion euros a year. The scrapping of the licence fee was a surprise and little-debated campaign promise made by Emmanuel Macron in this year's presidential election. The president says the decision was taken to help reduce the 'cost of living' burden on French households. But as Mediapart's Dan Israel argues here in this opinion article, the move poses a serious threat to France's public broadcasters who will now have to rely on a government grant from VAT receipts rather than their own dedicated tax. A number of senior figures in public broadcasting have warned about the potential threat this could cause to the independence and quality of editorial content.

    by Dan Israel

  • 'Exploited' migrant delivery staff in France accuse Amazon of ignoring their plight

    France

    Seven workers originally from Africa were employed by a private delivery firm that worked for the giant American company in northern France from October 2021 until being laid off in February 2022. During that time they worked very long hours for low and often irregular pay. The workers insist that Amazon must have known that they were being exploited. The American group denies the workers' claims. Meanwhile the employees' case against the subcontractor is soon to be heard at an industrial tribunal. Dan Israel reports.

    by Dan Israel

  • Macron appoints Élisabeth Borne as his new prime minister

    France — Analysis

    Élisabeth Borne was on Monday named as France’s new prime minister, replacing Jean Castex under who she served for the last two years as labour minister. Borne, 61, is the second-ever woman to lead a French government, after Édith Cresson who was briefly in office 30 years ago. The future of Borne and her government now hangs on the results of legislative elections to be held next month, when it remains to be seen whether Macron’s Renaissance party can maintain a working majority in parliament. Dan Israel and Ilyes Ramdani analyse Borne’s track record, and the challenges she now faces.

    by Dan Israel and Ilyes Ramdani

  • Summer reads: a graphic account of the adventures of Anaïs Nin

    France

    Léonie Bischoff is a Swiss artist and creator of graphic novels, the latest of which is a highly original account of the key episodes in the turbulent life of French-Cuban-American writer Anaïs Nin, based on the contents of her most intimate, unexpurgated diaries. As part of a summer series in which Mediapart journalists highlight those books published over the last 12 months which have particularly caught their eye, Dan Israel reviews Bischoff’s Anaïs Nin, Sur la mer des mensonges (Anaïs Nin, on the sea of lies), a seven-years-in-the-making, no-holds-barred story of Nin’s adventures and quest for personal freedom.

    by Dan Israel

  • French unions warn of 'social timebomb' over Daimler sale of Smart factory

    France

    German carmaking giant Daimler, owner of Mercedes-Benz, announced last month that it was to sell off its factory in Hambach, north-east France, where the Smart city car, another of the group’s marques, has been produced since 1997. Five years ago, staff at the plant accepted a management plan to abandon the legal 35-hour week, working a 39-hour week (excluding overtime) in return for job security. But now the 1,600 jobs at the site, turned over to making electric versions of the city car, are at risk, with just one potential purchaser in view: British company Ineos, which plans to produce a diesel-guzzling offroader. Dan Israel reports.

    by Dan Israel

  • French justice ministry report highlights fatal failings in domestic violence cases

    France

    Victims of domestic violence in France, the vast majority of who are women, are being failed by the justice system and police, notably by not offering effective responses to formal complaints, concludes a French justice ministry report published at the weekend. The report examined 88 cases of domestic violence that ended in murder during the period 2015-2016, and of these 83 percent of the victims were women, many of whom had previously lodged complaints. Associations monitoring media-reported cases of women murdered by their partners or ex-partners estimate they number 135 so far this year. Meanwhile, justice minister Nicole Belloubet has said that the justice system “very clearly" is malfunctioning, and that new legislation must be drafted to address the failings. Dan Israel reports.

    by Dan Israel

  • 'Indelibles': the joyous story of Charlie Hebdo before the massacre

    France

    The shooting massacre carried out by jihadist terrorists in their attack on the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 left 12 people dead, including most of the satirical magazine’s cartoonists. Luz was one of those who escaped the attack, by chance because he arrived late for an editorial meeting. After producing an illustrated book about the events, he has published a cartoon work, Indélébiles (Indelibles), in which he pays tribute to his dead colleagues by celebrating, across more than 300 pages of sketches, their lives and work together. In this first of a series in which members of Mediapart’s editorial team recommend their choice reading for the summer, Dan Israel sets out how Luz has succeeded in producing a lively, joyous, radiant and moving homage to his indelible friends.              

    by Dan Israel

  • France Télécom staff suicides trial: a landmark for corporate culture?

    France — Interview

    The trial in Paris on charges of moral harassment of the former CEO of France Télécom and six other senior executives of the company, who are accused of causing a wave of staff suicides amid a brutal corporate restructuring plan, ended on Thursday. While the verdicts will only finally be announced in December, the prosecution has demanded that the defendants be handed maximum sentences, which include jail terms of between eight months and one year. Mediapart turned to Rachel Saada, a French lawyer specialised in labour law cases and who notably represented the families of Renault staff who took their lives in a wave of suicides at the carmaking group between 2006-2007, for her analysis of the trial, and its implications for corporate culture in France. 

    by Dan Israel

  • France Télécom bosses' trial: the witness for those who died

    France

    In an ongoing trial in Paris, the former boss of France Télécom, the now renamed Orange telecommunications giant, along with six of his former top executives, stand accused of moral harassment of staff in a brutal four-year cost-cutting plan to axe 22,000 jobs, during which more than 30 employees took their own lives, including by immolation, hanging and defenestration. At least 13 others attempted suicide, and many more were diagnosed with depression. One of the latter is Yves Minguy, a highly skilled computing engineer who, after 35 years with the company, was humiliatingly posted to answer the telephone at a customer call centre. He took to the witness stand last week and afterwards told Mediapart of the duty he felt to speak “for those who are no longer here”.

    by Dan Israel

  • The French government's lies over May Day 'attack' on Paris hospital

    France — Investigation

    The Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris has been at the centre of a major controversy after incidents that took place there in the aftermath of this year's annual May Day demonstrations. Throughout the evening of May 1st and into the following morning, several members of the government and senior health managers in Paris insisted the well-known hospital had been “attacked” by violent demonstrators. Yet in fact there was no such attack: instead, a few dozen protestors sought refuge in the hospital's buildings to escape police tear gas and charges. There was no threatening behaviour from protestors towards hospital staff and none of them damaged the premises. However, some were later hit by the police. Now interior minister Christophe Castaner has formally retracted his use of the word “attack”. Dan Israel reports.

    by Dan Israel

  • The divisions behind the latest 'gilets jaunes' social protests in Paris

    France — Analysis

    This Saturday December 1st the so-called 'gilets jaunes' or yellow hi-vis vest protesters will take to the streets of central Paris for the third weekend in a row. This time other groups – unions, anti-racist movements and student groups – are also planning demonstrations in the capital. But while they might all be demonstrating at the same time, these different components of the current social movement sweeping across France are not all on the same wavelength when it comes to their aims and objectives. Mathilde Goanec, Dan Israel and Faïza Zerouala report.

    by Mathilde Goanec, Dan Israel and Faïza Zerouala