15/06/2007
The CGT trade union delegation at the Mulhouse (eastern France) site of the French car manufacturing group Peugeot-Citroën has denounced management's practice of sending letters to workers on sick leave meant to make them feel guilty. The CGT has collected around 100 such letters over the past year. "These are standard letters," explains the CGT delegation. "They were sent to workers from the Mulhouse site on sick leave, who submitted a medical certificate." The other unions, among them the CFDT and FO, confirm the pressure but have not joined the CGT's action.



Le Monde obtained a copy of one of these letters, in which the head of personnel draws "attention to the length and frequency" of the worker's absence. The letter goes on to state that "personal absenteeism is incompatible with industrial organisation and disrupts in an unacceptable way the working of the production unit." It concludes by calling on the worker "to make important and lasting changes to [his] behaviour."

The union's denunciation of this practice comes in a particularly tense social context, following the suicide of four workers at the Mulhouse site over the last two months.

Without wishing to establish a cause-and-effect relationship with those tragedies, the CGT nevertheless intends to denounce "the hardness of the work, which encourages depressions" and to look into the possible impact "of the guilt-inducing letters sent to workers on sick leave."