The Franco-Canadian group Orpea, which runs retirement homes and health clinics, has been accused of spying on its workforce and then offering a deal worth four million euros to persuade a trade union to drop its official complaint and keep quiet about the covert practices. The claims relate to three Orpea clinics run through its subsidiary Clinea at Haÿ-les-Roses and Andilly in the Paris region and at Lyon in east France, where the group apparently hired “observers” to work among staff.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
According to documents seen by Mediapart these three observers were in reality “moles” planted by management to spy on staff and in particular union members, and to report back. The “spies”, who cost Orpea 14,000 euros a month each, came from the company Groupe Synergie Globale (GSG). This was the firm involved in the spying controversy surrounding furniture retailer Ikea, which is accused of snooping on its customers and staff in France.
The spies at the Orpea clinics tipped off management about information they thought was relevant to its concerns, writing regular weekly reports which Mediapart has seen and which are published below. Comments about members of staff include statements such as “X was seen with a member of the CGT [editor's note, the Confédération Générale du Travail trade union]”; “Y took drugs, marijuana and cannabis resin”; “Very sporty, [the union delegate] W seems to be tough and motivated”; “Some employees have announced that [for the strike] they will only take action for a few hours because with regard to salaries, they can't afford it”. Other remarks include: “Z has confided they have some difficulties with certain people who apparently use their [union] position to serve personal interests” and “The rumour is going around that the nurse is close to the director, both of them coming from the same Corsican village”.
Below, in French, are copies of those reports written by the “spies”, who were in place during 2010:
The real employees only discovered what had been going on in 2012, after an investigation published by L'Expansion magazine that highlighted the allegations against Ikea, but also reported claims that Orpea, too, had hired GSG to keep an eye on staff. The healthcare group publicly denied the claims at the time, and also denied them when questioned directly by the CGT union. According to claims it made in an internal email, the information that the group had been gathering had “no other aim than the improvement of working conditions” and the operation was simply seeking to “shed light for the management on the nature and scale of psychosocial risks”.
Then in December 2014 the Health and Social Action federation of the CGT – which represents many healthcare workers – finally decided to make a formal complaint over the spying, alleging “interference” in the workplace, “infringement of privacy” and the “fraudulent gathering of data of a personal nature”, and attacking what it called an “elaborate system of infiltration of unions and spying on employees”.
In its formal complaint the CGT said that “one of the principal missions of the 'plants' was to undermine union rights,” and pointed to efforts by the spies to “be elected or appointed under the [CGT] label”. Such a practice was apparently “unlawful” because attempts had not been made to “submit the practice to institutions representing personnel,” said Sofiane Hakiki, the lawyer who had retrieved the written reports written by the “spies” plus the invoices and the contracts that relate to them. Within barely three weeks the prosecution authorities in Paris had opened a preliminary investigation, sparking panic at Orpea. The allegations against Ikea, who are still under investigation by the judicial authorities in Versailles, west of Paris, led to the chief executive of Ikea in France being placed under formal investigation – one step short of being charged – in November 2013.
According to Mediapart's information, in February 2015 management at Orpea offered a deal to the CGT union – whose members are in a minority among workers at the healthcare firm compared with the 'in house' staff representative body Arc-en-Ciel - in a bid to keep the affair quiet. In return for the union withdrawing the complaint, the group promised to meet some of the CGT's long-standing demands, which would come at a total cost of four million euros to Orpea. This offer bypassed the ongoing official workplace negotiations that were then taking place. But they came at a good time for the CGT, which at the time was facing imminent worker representative elections that were likely to prove difficult for them.
The lengthy proposed deal – which says much about how the so-called 'social dialogue' between companies and their workers works in practice in France - involved Orpea agreeing to:
- the introduction of a workplace bonus for all workers who had been employed for more than three months (at a total cost of around 2 million euros in 2015)
- the awarding of an operating budget for each union representative body (at a cost of 200,000 euros a year)
- the drawing up of a charter of union rights
- and, most importantly, the creation of at least 16 regional works councils, each coupled with a committee dealing with health, safety and working conditions – known as a Comité d'Hygiène, de Sécurité et des Conditions de Travail (CHSCT) – with the appointment of new union delegates.
This final part of the offer marked a major concession for Orpea, which has always provided the bare legal minimum when it comes to worker representation. For though the group has 345 establishments across France, it has always considered itself as a single economic and social entity, and limited itself to just one one works council and one CHSCT. The total cost of this part of the offer was around 2 million euros. Orpea also agreed to “sort out” a handful of individual situations that were sensitive because they involved union representatives.
The draft agreement meanwhile stipulated that none of the concessions were in any way an admission of liability on the part of the group. The CGT was also expected to keep the 'pact' a secret, not just its contents but its very existence. One of the articles of the proposed deal expressly forbade the union from discussing it with the media.
After discussions between lawyers from the health federation of the CGT and the group, and after it had consulted workers at Orpea, the union eventually decided in February to reject the deal. “Signing the agreement could have brought benefits to the employees, some showed an interest in it,” says one source at the CGT health federation. “But the deal wasn't possible with such a rotten employer. To accept would have given the idea that a company can buy anything. Besides, we could not have taken advantage of this deal to win votes [editor's note, in the impending workplace representative elections] as the agreement was supposed to remain confidential.”
Two other 'moles'?
However, at the headquarters of the CGT near Paris, a senior official was less categoric in his views and said that the union's health federation could indeed have signed the deal. “Bosses frequently try to buy union activists,” he said regretfully. “But there was no question of that here, no question of handing over money to the federation so that it would keep its mouth shut. We're talking here about improving union rights and workers' conditions. Going from a legal dispute to negotiations, that happens regularly.”
It is certainly true that unions do sometimes halt legal action after having negotiated benefits for workers, for example in cases of discrimination against union representatives, as was the case at car maker Renault where hundreds of representatives received compensation and had their salaries increased. Such deals can also, for example, apply to disputes over Sunday working. These agreements are sometimes made public, sometimes kept confidential. But the legal action withdrawn in such cases usually involves relatively minor issues – for example breaches of workplace agreements – or the standard complaint of obstructing union business.
The deal offered by Orpea goes beyond this. For one thing, the sums of money involved seem exceptionally large. Moreover, according to independent employment lawyers Mediapart has spoken to the case appears to concern more than 'just' attacks on union rights, but also involves infringements of fundamental freedoms, which are in theory non-negotiable.
Contacted several times by Mediapart, the management at Orpea has declined to make any comment. The group's lawyer, Louis de Gaulle, refused even to confirm the existence of any offer by the group, and merely noted that these forms of negotiations between lawyers “when they exist” are bound by professional confidentiality. The union's lawyer also refused categorically to speak to Mediapart.
According to various sources, Orpea had tried all it could to win over the CGT. Mediapart has been told that the group suggested to the union that it had other moles inside both the company and the CGT health federation, and even went as far as revealing two names, as a sign of its “good intentions”. One of those two people named, who is said to be severely depressed, does not want anything more to do “with either Orpea or the CGT”, according to their daughter, who was contacted by telephone. The other person named has hired a lawyer and is refusing to make any comment.
One factor in Orpea's favour – though ultimately it was unsuccessful in getting a deal - was that the CGT health federation, the second largest in the union in terms of membership, has been split by dissension and rivalries in recent years and rival factions could be played off against each other. During its recent annual conference the federation voted out most of the members of its ruling committee, including its secretary general. “What is to Orpea's advantage is that CGT Health is as leaky as a sieve because of its internal problems,” says one of its members. “The company doesn't even need to put in observers as people are spying and squealing themselves. Obviously that raises questions over the state of our organisation...”
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter