Racist Messages Expose Discrimination Against Maghrebi Workers at French Postal Bank

It is not good to be an employee of Maghrebi origin - especially the subordinates - and to work at the post office bank. Racist insults rain down so much. The racist messages dating from 2018 that resurfaced in November 2022 are proof of this. "After our seminar with the orangutans and then in the savanna, I suggest a seminar in the Maghreb: In search of our ATM (sick leave) style treasure hunt. Interested? Disorientation and exoticism guaranteed... But our ransom demands are unlikely to be taken care of by LBP (La Banque Postale)," comments in a Maghreb group a hierarchical boss who is part of the managers who work or have worked on the historic site of the Postal Checks still located in La Source, one of the working-class neighborhoods of Orléans (45).

"It is essentially a team leader and the head of the Customer Relationship and Experience Center of the postal checks," explains to Street Presse a trade unionist from Sud-PTT, a federation of local French unions in the postal and telecommunications sector. According to him, "the managers, like the victims of these discriminations, have been perfectly identified simply because they provide sufficiently explicit details, up to displaying their identity behind phantom pseudonyms."

Seized by the Sud-PTT union on these racist and insulting remarks, management assured that there was a statute of limitations and that these were exchanges within the framework of a private messaging system before changing their tune. She condemned the racist, sexist and denigrating remarks of her managers. Not enough for the union, which demands the departure of the two bosses from their positions of responsibility. "If management corrects the shot and does not content itself with simply creating a listening cell, we are ready to amend our press release," confides the trade unionist from the Postal Checks.