Agencies – More than 800 Moroccan workers along with their families attended on Monday the appeal session in the lawsuit they filed against the country’s national railway company, SNCF for discrimination during their work.
The 800 workers gathered in the Great Hall of the Court of Appeal in Paris. “We are waiting for our rights to be recognized because the French National Railway Company has raped them”, said Hussein Ablo, 72. He explained that he had to “work 15 years more” than his French colleagues to be able to retire. “They took 15 years of my life” said the man, who receives a pension of €1,700. “ I want justice this is not what the company promised us he added
The Paris workers’ tribunal ruled in September 2015 that it was unfair for the SNCF to have taken on 832 “Chibanis” (Moroccan term for elderly people) on far less generous staff contracts than their French colleagues in the 1970s to carry out tough manual jobs, and for them to end up with pensions a third lower than their Gallic equivalents. The court ordered the company to pay about €170m in damages to the workers. The public company denies any discrimination and says that the railway workers under a specific pension fund have benefited from the funds rules, as well as European citizens under the age of thirty when were employed, while the contract workers who were employed by a private contract did not benefit from it
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