The former general secretary of Force Ouvrière (FO) Pascal Pavageau and two former members of his team were sentenced on Tuesday October 31 to fines for having drawn up a file of union officials which caused a scandal in 2018. Pascal Pavageau, 54 years old , was elected head of FO in April 2018 following Jean-Claude Mailly and resigned six months later, after the revelation by Le Canard chainé of this file, which had caused a serious crisis within the third union French.

The Paris criminal court sentenced him to a fine of 4,000 euros for collecting personal data by fraudulent means and storing sensitive data without consent between 2016 and 2018. His co-defendants, former chief of staff and chief of staff , were fined 2,000 euros and 1,500 euros respectively for collecting, storing and processing data without measures ensuring security. However, all three were acquitted of the offense of illegal retention beyond the stipulated duration, for procedural reasons.

An “inadmissible” listing

FO was also awarded one euro in damages and 1,000 euros in legal fees. “What we wanted was to clean up our organization. This listing was unacceptable. Justice has done justice to the organization,” reacted Frédéric Souillot, current secretary general of FO, present at the delivery of the decision. At the heart of this file, two tables, dating from late 2016-early 2017, listing some 130 union officials. In one column there were mentions like “Trotskyist”, “Freemason”, “homo”, “seriously ill” or even “stupid”, “scum”, “completely crazy”, “embezzles money”, “charismatic », “fine strategist”… These tables were transmitted to several people – between three and five – within FO.

During the trial on September 13, Pascal Pavageau claimed to have “discovered them for the first time in 2018”, in Le Canard chainé. He admitted to having wanted to “train” his team, made up of people from outside the union, by telling them about the organization to which he had belonged for two decades. But if he had clearly seen that his colleagues were “taking notes”, he assured that he “never” had “asked to make a file”. His co-defendants, dismissed in the wake of the affair, had on the contrary maintained that he was aware and said they regretted an “error”. All three denounced at the time a “very harsh climate” within FO.