The fire at the Tessi Prochèques Nord company, in Roubaix, on the night of Thursday to Friday, is one of the most serious events to have occurred in the North during the riots which followed the death of Nahel in Nanterre. If the material damage is considerable, there are however no injuries to deplore. No injuries, of course, but collateral victims, the employees of the site, half of whom were put on partial unemployment. In despair at having seen their working tool go up in smoke, the employees almost lost a good part of their income. It won’t.
The rioters took it twice to shoot down a company established in the sensitive district of Alma, in Roubaix, for almost a quarter of a century. A first outbreak of fire took place in the night from Wednesday to Thursday, without too many consequences. The coup de grace came the following night, this time with a fire that completely destroyed the premises of Tessi, an administrative digitization company that employs nearly 500 people. To this was added the looting of equipment spared by the flames.
An agreement finally reached on partial unemployment
The day after the tragedy, the management presented to the CSE a “business continuity plan” with a certain number of proposals which did not delight the elected representatives of the majority union South. According to the secretary of SUD Télécom Nord, Vladimir Marcus, despite a teleworking agreement signed in early June, management only planned to benefit from this device “a minority of employees”. He adds that a “maximum of 50 employees were assigned to an annex site and that the others were going to be on partial unemployment”. Still according to Sud, for the latter, the company had no intention of compensating for the compensation paid by the State equivalent to 60% of the gross salary.
“Most of the employees are from Roubaix and Tourcoing and are paid minimum wage, this was tantamount to plunging them into poverty when they had nothing to do with what happened,” laments the trade unionist. Eventually there will be nothing. Admittedly, the management does not intend to extend, at least for the moment, access to teleworking. She nevertheless promised, this Wednesday, to compensate for the partial unemployment benefit so that the employees prevented from working continue to receive 100% of their gross salary.
For the future? It is too early to make plans for the comet. To the elected representatives of the CSE, the management expressed its fears that the situation would last for several months. Tessi needs to find new premises capable of accommodating everyone, “we don’t know where yet, but it will probably be in mainland France”, hopes Vladimir Marcus. Contacted by 20 minutesTessi’s management has not (yet) responded.