Sixty-six days without revenue, 266 French employees of the airline Norwegian Air Resources Limited (134 pilots and 132 cabin crew) closed at the tricolor in January. Compiled on Wednesday. Bobigny (Sean-Saint-Denis). Their goal? Get a liquidation procedure in France to avail Wage Guarantee Insurance (AGS) to receive wages. For good reason: After the French branch closed down Norwegian Air Resources France, the parent company gave them no sign of life.

The file is a real headache: the whole thing has been going on until now in Ireland, where the company was in liquidation. The French branch of the Norwegian low-cost company is the second largest. According to Mr. Fyodor Rilov, a French employee’s lawyer, the purpose of the proceedings before the Court of Commerce is to “appoint a liquidator in France for justice, in the hope that the French representative will take the necessary steps, and the company will be subject to the most basic rules of French social law”. Irish restrictions were not limited from a financial point of view, and another procedure was summarized in court.

“We fear employees will go wild”

On the part of employees, stress increases. “There is an emergency: we are afraid the staff will go wild. For some, it is not enough to pay their bills, ”said Jordan Pasalek, pilot and union representative for the National Union of Airline Pilots (SNPL). He claims that management and liquidators have not been warned to deal with “these psychological risks”. “The situation is very complicated because Irish liquidators do not provide proof of their insolvency and do not qualify for the salary of the requesting authorities,” added SNPL union spokesman Jan Croson. Suddenly, the AGS could not do their job. “

In the absence of pay, colleagues rallied to assert their rights. “We contacted the AGS service to find out if the Irish liquidator had sent them salary claim documents, but this did not happen and we do not know what to do anymore,” explains Shannon Ductile, a representative of the National Staff Union Commercial Navigator (SNPNC). ) Was elected to CSE. On his part, Union Representative Anastasia DurandUnion of Civil Aviation Flight Crew A representative of (Unac) Flight Officers also states: “An administrative no man land”, “Impossibility to claim a job center or another job because we are still officially contracted.”

“This situation is not acceptable”

To clarify the situation, Labor Minister Elizabeth Bourne and Transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djibari have, as far as we know, very officially attached to their Norwegian counterparts this Wednesday. In a letter we discussed, they point out: “And the lack of cooperation from the company [celle] Of the liquidator [qui] This will lead to the blocking of certain insurance schemes that employees can claim ”. “This situation is not acceptable, and the ministers condemn it, especially since the company benefited during the Covid-19 health crisis, in terms of deductions from social contributions rather than from French state support and domestic action plan allowances. “

For the final device, they explain, “since March 2020 it has received about 8 million euros.” “The company is not responding and is awaiting a judge’s decision,” said Mr Jerome Skopoli, a lawyer for Norwegian Air. The Commercial Court will hear the case this Thursday and the Judicial Court’s decision on May 21.