This is an unprecedented situation for a group of this size, which is also partly owned by the State. For the second time this year, professional elections risk failing in Orange. While 133,000 current and former employees of the telecommunications operator were called to elect, from Tuesday, November 19 to Thursday, November 21, their twelve representatives on the supervisory board of Orange Actions, the company’s mutual fund that owns 7.5 % of capital (12.10% of voting rights), management is concerned about possible irregularities.
“The electoral operations control commission (…) confirmed a certain number of violations of electoral regulations, mainly by the CFE-CGC Naranja”indicates the address in a message to employees published on Friday, November 22, one day after the results were announced. The operator’s first union is suspected of polling employees during the elections, including on their email or personal number. The message also mentions “personal attacks and falsehoods.”
These incidents occur at a time when the Nanterre Commercial Court, sued by the CFDT, the second union of the group, had canceled, on May 4, the elections organized in February to elect the representative of the employee shareholders in the board of directors. This position has been vacant since then. The judge was already sanctioning “a violation of the principle of equality of arms through the massive use, by a union organization (the CFE-CGC), of extraordinary means in favor of a candidate”.
“We had signed a new electoral protocol to prevent these practices from being repeated, but this continued. “We are considering taking legal action again.”underlines Olivier Berducou, central union delegate of the CFDT Orange. In the event of cancellation, the employee shareholders’ fund, the second largest shareholder after the State (23%), runs the risk of not being able to vote at the next general meeting, in spring 2025.
“An execrable atmosphere”
Without ruling out filing a defamation complaint, Sébastien Crozier, president of the CFE-CGC of Orange, reveals that he himself denounced the group, before the vote was held. “challenge the new electoral protocol, rewritten by the management, hand in hand with the CFDT”.
Common in the union world, these battles would remain anecdotal if they did not have an impact on Orange’s governance and if they did not demonstrate a deterioration in the social climate. Mr. Crozier himself acknowledges “an execrable atmosphere”. His relationships with management, whose departure he constantly demands, are notoriously difficult. Especially with President Jacques Aschenbroich, appointed to these functions in May 2022, when he himself was seeking the position.
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