Scopelec employees demonstrate in Paris, April 7, 2022. ALAIN JOCARD / AFP In difficulty since the loss of a large contract with the incumbent telecom operator, Orange’s subcontractor, Scopelec, is preparing a social plan which could lead to the redundancy of 800 people, the company said on Thursday April 21, confirming information from Le Figaro. “The management announced the plan to bring together the social partners in the coming days to prepare the implementation of a PSE [plan de sauvegarde de l’emploi] which would concern 800 jobs” out of 3,600, said a spokesperson for the company – the first cooperative in France in terms of number of employees. A demonstration of Scopelec employees is to be held Thursday at Place de la Bastille in Paris. The company was providing fiber optic installation and copper network maintenance for Orange, under a contract that expired at the end of March, and which represented 40% of its estimated turnover at 475 million euros in 2021. The subcontractor, who was notified in mid-November of the loss of this contract, believes that he had no warning signs from Orange on the loss of business volume , and not having had time to prepare for it. Read also: Article reserved for our Orange subscribers: after the loss of its contracts, Scopelec increases the legal pressure against the operator Avoid “one of the heaviest social plans” Since November when 1,800 threatened jobs were mentioned, “700 people have either been reclassified internally, or left for other companies that have won the markets, or left the very field of telecoms, ”continued the spokesperson for Scopelec. The company’s associate employees published an open letter in several newspapers on Thursday to presidential candidates Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, as well as candidates in the legislative elections, calling on them to act to avoid “one of the heaviest plans social conditions that France has known for months”. The company, which has been in the backup procedure for a month, asks that Orange “really support it in [sa] social restructuring” and finances part of the PES, and that the state shareholder “plays the role of impartial arbiter”. She intends to appeal the decision rendered Friday, April 15 by the judge in chambers of the Paris Commercial Court, who had dismissed her request for extension of the contract with Orange, and “will also assign Orange on the merits because the rupture commercial contracts does not seem to us to have respected the rules of commercial law”, she explained. Read also: Telecoms: facing Orange, Scopelec obtains a stay in court Le Monde with AFP