Study Reveals Major French Companies Accused of Discriminatory Hiring Against North Africans

The study by the General Commission for Territorial Equality, commissioned by the government, covers 40 large companies drawn at random, reports Le Parisien. This full-scale testing was carried out between October 2018 and January 2019. More than 10,000 applications to various sites of each group were sent.

Among them, it was proven that Air France, Accor Hotels, Altran (engineering), Arkema (chemicals), Renault, Rexel (electrical equipment), and Sopra Steria (software publishing) practice "significant discrimination" against candidates with North African-sounding names, according to the study report.

The same study reveals that sending an application - spontaneous in most cases - with a French-sounding name has a 12.5% chance of receiving a positive response (a simple acknowledgment of receipt is sufficient); while an application with a North African-sounding name has a 9.3% chance.

According to the office of the Minister for the City and Housing, Julien Denormandie, "this 3-point differential is too important to be a statistical fluke. It corresponds to a 25% lower chance of getting a positive response when you have a North African-sounding name".