AFP management’s mistakes are costly… to employees!

On July 16, 2025, AFP management issued a statement about the results of an internal investigation into what it called "moral harassment." SUD made a swift and factual response to this statement which, deliberately or not, mixed up a preventive investigation with a judicial probe, thus giving the impression management had been cleared of harassment. The report on this investigation, conducted by a specialized psychosocial risk prevention firm, was delivered to the Health, Safety, and Working Conditions Commission (CSSCT) on March 17, 2025. The trade unions agreed that the minutes of this meeting would not be published to protect the anonymity of those involved. However, SUD demanded that the conclusions of this investigation and our comments be made public in some form: employees have the right to know the outcome concerning a situation that put AFP into the media spotlight, is the subject of a criminal harassment probe and will undoubtedly end up before at least a civil judge. Even more so since we believe that the investigation whitewashed management’s failures, the most fundamental of which was the failure to fulfill its obligation to protect the safety and health of its employees.

Here is a summary of the facts. Shortly after taking up a new position in October 2023 in the Paris newsroom, a journalist reported difficulties with her manager, which worsened over time and caused months of suffering at work. Despite several consultations with the company doctor and intervention by management, this employee decided to trigger AFP’s harassment alert system in June 2024. Three months later, a DGI alert (serious and imminent danger) was declared by the secretary of the CSE after this employee suffered a workplace accident that occurred in the presence of the labor inspector. A DGI alert requires the employer to launch an investigation to establish the causes of this situation and remedy it without delay, since the employer has an obligation to ensure the health and safety of its employees. At the CSE meeting of October 18, 2024, SUD requested that this preventative investigation be conducted by an outside organization in order to avoid any conflict of interest, given that management was directly implicated. The labor inspector also stated that an investigation carried out by the people involved could not be properly conducted.
Management finally agreed to hire an external service provider to conduct the investigation, carried out a tender and hired a firm. The first problem is that the choice of firm was not reviewed by the CSE. SUD noted during the extraordinary CSSCT meeting held on November 13, 2024, which was intended to launch the investigation, that the choice of firm had not been explained or discussed. The designated firm, present at the meeting, therefore delivered a presentation of its work, its charter, and how it planned to conduct the investigation. SUD monitored the progress of this investigation within a so-called steering committee of the investigation, and in conjunction with the labor inspector. We did not interfere in the progress of the investigation and now wish to communicate to employees our observations on how it was carried out and its conclusions, as they were presented at a CSSCT meeting held on March 17, 2025. [1] It should be noted that the report itself remains confidential and was provided only to management and the person who launched the DGI alert.

Instead of clarity, confusion

SUD regrets the lack of improvement in the situation despite the Agency’s significant financial and human investment to resolve a conflict between an employee and her superiors. This investigation did not achieve what it promised: we clearly ended up in even greater confusion than began. The firm, unilaterally chosen by management, lacked the expertise in carrying out this type of investigation. The firm said an analysis of the situation could lead to recommendations. However, we got neither an explication of the situation nor recommendations to avoid a repetition.
This firm, according to the labor inspector, failed to properly define the scope of the investigation. It announced at a preparatory meeting that it had no legal qualifications that would allow it to determine whether or not the employee had been the victim of harassment. However, it was the theme of harassment that management addressed in its July 16, 2025 statement, as well as highlighting the work on the "16 grievances" listed by the employee. The firm devoted more time to researching evidence concerning the accusations made, while emphasizing their defamatory nature on numerous occasions, than to finding the explanatory factors for the employee’s serious workplace accident.

Suffering acknowledged with reluctance

We observed contradictions in the report’s conclusions. The firm confirmed that the serious and imminent danger (DGI) alert was well-founded and that the employee’s suffering was real. However, management denied this reality by expressing reservations to the national health insurance system (CPAM) regarding the workplace accident that gave rise to the DGI. The labor inspector had to reestablish the facts and provide evidence of the accident to the CPAM. Furthermore, we discovered that management had been aware of this employee’s suffering for a very long time: she consulted the company doctor six times over a nine-month period. Human Resources initiated discussions, but the employee did not receive prompt assistance regarding her complaint and her suffering.

A solution or a sanction?

The handling of the situation by the employee’s managers was confused. It was decided to change the service she worked in. According to management this was done to remove her from the conflictual environment, but according to the employee it was to punish her. What management presented as a preventive action was experienced as further exclusion by the already fragile employee. Before this forced change of position, a message from the employee indicated that she had finally become comfortable in her position. This job change, according to the information we have, only exacerbated the employee’s feeling of ostracism.
The investigation revealed the formation of a group, a “college” made up of newsroom managers from which Human Resources, which decided to remove the employee from her position to calm the conflict and because of doubts about her competence, even comparing the person to another employee who "himself had failed and had to leave his position" (p. 72). The facts therefore show that the motivation for this reassignment was not only a protective measure but also a reorientation following "editorial problems" (p. 29) according to the firm. The employee was not considered competent for her post by her managers for several reasons that the employee disputes. The trade unions provided evidence that demonstrates both her commitment to the post and her willingness to work with colleagues as part of a team (p. 48). During the CSSCT meeting there was a very long debate between the firm, which listed the professional grievances against the employee, and certain unions, including SUD, which contested these judgments.
Management and the firm stated that the change of post was not a sanction, since it was made as part of a disciplinary procedure (pp. 74-75). The fact that there was no determination of misconduct or dismissal was, in the eyes of the firm and management, proof that this was not a disciplinary measure (p. 92). The firm showed some confusion on this subject: "We are not observing a professional failure. At a given moment, something did not work, we do not consider that to be a professional failure" (p. 74). However, the firm had spent the previous hours of the CSSCT highlighting the employee’s inadequate skills for the post. Furthermore, we learned that during the interview during which management announced this change of position, the quality of her work had been criticized. There was therefore a mixture of genres between sanction and mediation (p. 89).

A foggy waiting room

A disagreement arose between the firm which carried out the investigation, on the one hand, and SUD and CFE-CGC trade union, on the other, over whether or not the employee had agreed to change posts. The employee had agreed to a temporary reassignment (July-September 2024), ahead of a possible permanent reassignment on the condition a probe was conducted into the harassment she denounced, and her suffering was recognized. This did not take place. And the definitive reassignment did not take place since the employee was again put on sick leave. This vagueness of the situation also fueled the employee’s suffering, as she did not know to which post she would be assigned upon her return from sick leave. "There was a workplace accident when XXX had a crisis after learning that she did not have a job assignment [...] she discovered during this meeting, I believe the meeting took place on Friday, that on the following Monday when she was due to return to work, she did not in fact have a job assignment. It was a major psychological shock, which was later recognized as a workplace accident and resulted in a number of weeks off work. This is where the DGI comes from,” according to the SUD representative who followed this case closely (p. 86).
Regarding the reassignment, management did not want to adapt the normal appointment process to the situation (p. 99). The reassignment was therefore a potential new source of stress and conflict since the employee could not choose a post she wanted with the guarantee of obtaining it. The employee initially did not want to leave the position she held despite the great difficulties she encountered, but she could not obtain an equivalent post either (p. 105). The situation was inextricable for management, which wanted neither to keep her in her position nor to guarantee her another one (p. 99). Management finally proposed to the CSCCT that the employee be assigned to a post outside of the normal competitive procedure with the agreement of the unions. However, to which post the employee would be assigned had still not been clarified: a return to the initial post was not envisaged nor a post on an editorial desk, while finding another post that allowed a tranquil return to work appeared difficult (p. 115-116).

False neutrality

The firm refused to judge management’s responsibility in the handling of this affair (p. 12), but did point out that of others.
When we questioned the firm about the lack of response from the Human Resources department to address the employee’s suffering when it was brought to its attention, the firm responded that HR should have been alerted by the company doctor (p. 13, 40 and 41). The company doctor, for her part, indicated that due to medical confidentiality she could not betray the trust of employees. The company doctor did not have any tools at her disposal to manage such a situation (p. 42: "The company doctor no longer has the possibility of temporarily declaring employees incapable of working. This was removed in 2017"). Furthermore, HR was already aware of the employee’s situation (p. 41). Finally, in its recommendations, the firm admitted that HR should have contacted the company doctor (p. 82). For her part, the labor inspector also raised the issue of the management’s response to the employee’s initial alert and its responsibility (p. 109). The labor inspector also noted that the member of management who was the direct cause of the employee’s DGI participated in the meeting delivering the report on the external investigation even though she was implicated.
The firm that carried out the investigation sometimes implied, consciously or not, that the staff representatives had not carried out their role properly. They had allegedly taken advantage of a particular case to use it as an example during clashes with management (p. 88), and they had provided poor support to the employee (p. 79).
The employee’s skills and good faith were seriously called into question (pp. 15, 18 to 21), suggesting that she was the sole source of the conflict due to professional errors that allegedly created tensions with the rest of the team. Management indicated that the employee refused mediation (pp. 89 and 98). According to the firm, if the situation degenerated, it was because she did not accept the decisions of her superiors: "A stubbornness towards her superiors that we did not understand". In short, the employee appears to be the sole cause of the conflict through her disobedience and her complaints. On the question of a skills shortfall being behind the change of post, the firm made judgments about what was normal or not in the exercise of a journalist’s profession. The firm even defended the people accused by the employee by asking the labor inspector why they were not legitimate in doing what the employee accused them of (p. 25).
The firm which carried out the investigation did not wish to qualify moral harassment, since it is a legal matter. However, on the contrary, it sought to establish elements of it based on the employee’s grievances (p. 78). Furthermore, it repeatedly emphasized the seriousness of such an accusation and the possibility of a consequent defamation action (pp. 26, 28, 29, 56 and 91). The firm refused to understand the employee’s position, believing that she was accusing her management of a criminal offense, without proof (according to it). It was as if the firm was seeking to determine whether the employee was wrongly accusing her superiors. Management also spoke of the seriousness of this accusation (p. 109). For SUD, insisting so much on defamation amounts to intimidation of victims who want to speak out, and SUD wishes to point out that only the courts can rule on harassment and defamation. The company, for its part, must ensure that employees can express themselves freely and raise awareness about their working conditions.

A probe with holes

Not all the significant elements of the sequence of events were clearly presented during the restitution of the investigation. We received a presentation of the employee’s grievances, but not the chronology of events, which the staff representatives had to reconstruct during the meeting (p. 76), based on their own knowledge of the file obtained elsewhere or by asking questions (p. 81). Members of the CSSCT learned about the sequence of events in the workplace accident during the session from the labor inspector, when the representative of the firm had already left (p. 102). The summary of the results of the investigation should have been presented at least briefly in a document, and not just mentioned drip by drip during the meeting, in order to facilitate better understanding by the members of the CSSCT.
We requested the dates of the alleged professional errors committed by the employee in order to verify whether there was any opportunism in using common professional mistakes against an employee who management wishes to get rid of. These dates were not communicated, the criticism of the employee’s work was not contextualized, even though professional mistakes can have many causes tied to the workplace: a lack of support, training, time, etc. SUD repeatedly requested (p. 55) an assessment of the context in which the employee’s team was working. Indeed, the events took place when the service in question was put under intense stress, where tensions and anxieties about the accuracy of the information being treated could emerge. Such an assessment was not presented. Meanwhile, what could have been described as a constituent element of harassment was normalized. Certain emails cited during the meeting sparked debate: the same message was described by the firm as a compliment, while the unions and the labor inspector found it humiliating (p. 31).
The lack of an immediate response from management to the workplace distress alert was justified by the fact that, at the same time, another negotiation for a job change was underway. The firm did not investigate AFP’s IT system to determine why the company’s internal harassment alert system (via Inside) did not generate an email to HR even though the employee received an acknowledgment of receipt. A staff representative from the technical department strongly doubted such a malfunction (p. 45).
The CSSCT determined the firm had not even addressed in its investigation the meeting that gave rise to the workplace accident resulting in the DGI (pp. 104-105). The labor inspector was not interviewed by the firm, even though she was available and willing to do so, and the steering committee expected this to be done. Management says it was not aware of this, since, being itself implicated, it had no right to review the list of people interviewed (p. 112). Furthermore, the harassment alert document was not communicated to the labor inspector. The 16 grievances investigated by the firm were not communicated outside the steering committee, which itself only became aware of them at its last meeting (p. 113). The steering committee was unable to contribute to the investigation despite its attempts to do so (pp. 87, 95 and 113). It was only kept informed of the progress of the investigation (p. 113) and did not receive the written investigation report. The SUD representative who was part of the steering committee indicated that she would have liked to do more, to ask questions, but that she had no evidence to rely upon.

No recommendations

Since the firm did not find any explanatory factor for the DGI, it did not make any recommendations. It even said (p. 56) that it was not there for that: "the other questions that arise, which were not the subject of our investigation, are how do we ensure that a situation like this does not arise?" SUD is particularly shocked by the fact that this firm specializing in prevention neglected prevention.
However, the firm identified, together with the CSCCT, real difficulties that may arise in certain situations in the work of the journalists and that can create suffering: having one’s work extensively rewritten, moving from a managerial position to a production position under someone else’s authority, changing sections/departments/jobs, the need for support and the adaptation time of an employee who takes up a position in a service that is particularly under pressure – the employee took up her position in the middle of a period of particularly serious and anxiety-provoking news (p. 60). All of these difficulties that journalists regularly encounter could have been the subject of recommendations so that each employee can cope better.
Management acknowledged the Agency’s difficulty in adapting positions following this type of problem (p. 120). The labor inspector insisted upon this point: "We must take into account the fact that no one is immune to a mental health problem in their life, everyone will encounter a mental health problem in their life before the age of 60. So I think we must be humble about that, and life can sometimes throw complicated things at us, including work situations. I think these are things that must be planned for, anticipated. You still have a job, journalism, where there are latent psychosocial risks. I have interviewed more than 30 people at your company in the context of suffering at work, psychosocial risks, who expressed these difficulties to me, so I know what I am talking about in relation to this feedback" (p. 121).
There was subsequently a long debate between staff representatives and management on what should be published or not in order to respect the anonymity of those involved, while informing employees of the results of an investigation that shook the Agency in the press and in the CSE.

Conclusion

In conclusion, SUD believes that it is clear from the investigation that all parties involved were informed of the employee’s suffering and that the only action taken was a change of post, which the employee perceived as brutal, and that the negotiations between the employee and management were as laborious as they were fruitless.
The confused nature of management’s response and the questioning of the employee’s abilities, added to her suffering that was already present and known, could have caused the DGI. This was a finding that the firm which carried out the investigation did not offer, which, for its part, "does not explain" why this whole "affair" went "so far."
For SUD, the question was not whether the employee was wrong or whether the people involved were guilty, even though the firm clearly went down that path in its investigation (p. 57). For us, it was about rigorously examining a proven collective failure (p. 118). What we wanted, and what we did not obtain, was the identification of the causes, which were also clearly evident in the investigation, but which were never treated as such but rather as fortuitous elements when they were clearly structural. The trade unions SNJ, SUD, and FO (p. 108-109) expressed disappointment with the lack of recommendations promised by the firm (p. 108). Even management acknowledged the lack of recommendations (p. 111) and the company’s methodology. These recommendations would have been valuable and useful to all employees.
SUD strongly condemns the treatment of the employee during this investigation and the presentation of the findings. Her word was doubted and challenged, as were her skills and good faith. SUD deplores the fact that the investigation made more effort to judge the employee’s abilities and the legitimacy of her suffering than considering a failure or error in management’s process of handling a case of suffering at the workplace. We had the impression throughout this investigation that only the employee was being questioned. The labor inspector noted that strangely after 20 years of experience and a trouble-free career at the Agency suddenly nothing went right for the employee (p. 100). The investigation is favorable to everyone, except the employee, according to the inspector (pp. 101 and 104). For the labor inspector, everyone had their share of responsibility, and yet, it was the employee who bore both her suffering and the burden of repeatedly raising the alarm about it. In the end, it was she who was sidelined and then forced out of the company (p. 109).
SUD nevertheless welcomes the collective will of all members of the CSSCT at the end of this meeting of March 17, 2025 to find a solution and a suitable position to offer to the employee so that she could return from medical leave serenely (p. 114). Management also recognized the need to restore trust between employees and management (p. 117).
Despite these stated intentions, the sequence of events ended in further failure, as the employee was dismissed in July 2025 as unsuitable for working any position at AFP (as a result of the reported situation). As the conditions needed for a serene return to work at the Agency were still not met, an outside occupational doctor deemed that this situation represented a danger to her health. For SUD, this epilogue highlights the poor management of the case and the repeated refusal of AFP management to question itself. This inability is again evident in the statement it published on July 16, 2025, in which it not only does not distance itself from the external investigation despite its failures and shortcomings, but on the contrary relies upon it to comment on the criminal aspect of this case (an investigation into suspicions of moral harassment). Generally speaking, SUD believes that this case demonstrates AFP’s failure – intentional or not – to fulfill its obligation to protect the safety and health of its employees.

Paris, August 4, 2025
SUD-AFP (Solidarity-Unity-Democracy)

[1] We refer to pages of the minutes of the March, 17, 2025 CSSCT meeting. All of our observations are based on the minutes of this meeting.