When prejudices die hard. Seine-Saint-Denis was a victim of this on Tuesday during the morning interview with Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux on France Inter, questioned in particular on the outbreak of violence after the death of Nahel. “Yes there is a higher unemployment rate, yes, it is more difficult, if only for the question of transport, but there are jobs,” began the boss of Medef, speaking of the suburbs.
Before continuing: “There is a parallel economy in the suburbs, it must be said what is, the first employer in Seine-Saint-Denis is probably drug trafficking”. “I think there are a lot of people working informally in the underground economy,” he added.
“False” and “stigmatizing” remarks
As journalist Léa Salamé pointed out when listening to these remarks, the president of the departmental council of Seine-Saint-Denis, Stéphane Troussel, jumped out of his chair. In an open letter, consulted by AFP, he deplored that “by these remarks, which are as false as they are stigmatizing, [Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux] jeopardizes years of efforts to improve the life and image of working-class neighborhoods, on the part of all the actors and actresses on the ground in our suburbs”.
“The main employer in Seine-Saint-Denis is the public authorities. These are caregivers, teachers, law enforcement, firefighters and all public service workers. These are the “first and first of chores” that this disconnected elite embodied by the boss of Medef, was also very happy to applaud during the health crisis [du Covid] “Said Stéphane Troussel, who canceled his presence at a conference organized on Wednesday on the theme of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Apologies from Medef
For the president of the department, the boss of Medef “delights in fake news since Seine-Saint-Denis was in 2022 the second most creative department after Paris”. In 20 years, “the employment rate of Seine-Saint-Denis has jumped 30%” and is “the third largest contributor department in VAT to national wealth”, he insisted.
“This sentence was caricatural. I regret it because it could have hurt the inhabitants of 93. As I say later in the interview, the silent majority works and suffers from this underground economy ”, reacted the boss of Medef on Twitter after the indignation aroused by his about. In the rest of the interview, he affirms in fact that there is “a quarrelsome minority, but there is a majority who work and finally the big damage of this period is to give the image that in the suburbs we are thugs, we don’t want to work. No,” he continued.
During the same interview, the boss of Medef tackled the government on the issue of wages. “Bruno Le Maire or the government [sont] misplaced [pour mettre la pression aux entreprises sur les salaires] because we have maintained the purchasing power of our private sector employees, which is not the case in the public service, ”underlined Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux. “My mission is not to put pressure on companies, each business leader looks at his operating account and negotiates with his unions”, he hammered.
“The problem is that the economic situation of companies is very different depending on the sector: luxury is doing very well, aviation is up again, but trade, for example in textiles, is doing badly, so it’s very difficult to generalize”, concluded the leader of the first employers’ organization in France.