Retired doctor Dominique Huez received on 10 May the visit of a barullo, the fearsome official executing the seizures ordered by the courts. Huez worked for 30 years as a general practitioner at the nuclear power plant in Chino (France) in the state of Marseille. An official who had been kidnapping the two cars of his wife and husband for refusing to pay a penalty of EUR 1,000.

In September 2016, the disciplinary committees of the College of Physicians condemned Dominique Huez and Bernadette Berneron to pay EUR 1,000 each to Orys, the subcontract of the giant EDF, France’s leading electricity producer. They were condemned with the lowest penalty, but not paying the EUR 1,000 for Dr. Huez is a matter of honour.

The doctor was denounced in 2011 by the company Orys, which certified in writing to a sick welder of his team that his illness was related to working conditions, citing the abuse of his superiors. The worker won the lawsuit in prudhomas. The Prud’homme, ignored by the Basques of Hegoalde, is a special labor court, appointed by the unions and the employers, in which many conflicts between workers and employers are resolved, without reaching other labor courts composed of professional judges.

Prudhome condemned Orys to pay 20,000 euros to the worker for the moral persecution of her superiors, who were acquitted. Orys, which is outsourced from nuclear power plants, took the sanction and also agreed to terminate the contract with the worker in exchange for an additional EUR 80,000.

But later, Orys reported to the College of Physicians the doctor of the user, claiming that he did not comply with the deontological code by stating in writing that the worker suffered a depressive pathology that was related to abuse in the company. Before the college's disciplinary committee, several prestigious professionals defended Dr. Huez, who has a name in occupational psychiatry. They expressed surprise at the persecution of Dr. Huez, when it is the job of a working physician to find a meaning to the pain the patient tells him, in this case in the context of working conditions.

The Union of Occupational Health Professionals (SNPST) warned of the risk of the College of Physicians becoming a slave of the employer, leaving doctors who have to defend the health of the sick above all in the issue of occupational diseases without protection from their employers. In the last word of the trial, Huez said: “I’ve known fifteen suicides at the Chino nuclear power plant. In the case of the worker we referred to, I saw him at risk of suicide. My effort was to help this patient understand what was happening to him, so that he knew I was not crazy.”

As seen in the convictions of Huez and Bernerón, companies have found the slot to tie their hands to doctors. It is common for a sick worker to receive a medical certificate or a note that relates his problem to an employment issue. They are simple writings for the other doctor or for the patient to whom the patient has sent. But if one of the patients submits this writing to the labor court, the superiors press the doctor to modify it, threatening to go to the College of Physicians.

“For a doctor,” said Dominique Huez to Nouvelle Vie Ouvrier magazine, finding him before a disciplinary committee is a shame, a disaster. That's why more and more doctors are retiring, they're willing to change the diagnosis, and fewer and fewer of them have the courage to go ahead with the diagnoses. It is a well-organized operation by the employers, it must be clearly denounced.”

At a time when outsourcing predominates

Dr. Huez has recorded 11 similar penalties from 2013 to 2016 based on news published by medical schools. It is not easy to know how many complaints the French employers have lodged. Huez receives about 100 complaints a year from the news found, but there will probably be many more, as in most cases doctors retire for fear and change their diagnosis: “Because doctors experience these problems with great shame, they don’t tell anyone. And also many doctors defend themselves before school without lawyers!”

In the case of Huez, a group of associations, trade unions and movements of occupational medicine have issued a statement denouncing that this dynamic will harm us all. The doctors and their good work, no doubt. But also to workers, “who may lose recognition and the right to compensation for accidents at work and occupational diseases”. And all citizens, too.

It is further stated: “We, the doctors and the workers, have to move on to the offensive. Every day we are aware of the consequences of the violence that work organization exerts against workers: premature deaths with toxic substances, psychosocial pathologies for work – not recognized in the catalogues of occupational diseases – muscle and skeletal injuries are linked to the wild and inhumane management that speeds up work rhythms…”.

It is no coincidence that Dr. Huez's headache was caused by a subcontract from a nuclear power plant. “The more dangerous a job is, the more it is subcontracted,” the well-known doctor warned in an interview held in 2008 by the newspaper L’Humanité.

With subcontracting, commercial law has been elevated to labour law. Those who organise a job at the beginning are increasingly far from those who have to take it forward, those who prepare a task know nothing about the exact conditions of those who have to take it forward. Subcontractors, on the other hand, are lost in some minor partial works, those who work in maintenance have little information about what they have done before, nor accumulated experience. The most dangerous jobs will focus on the least experienced workers.

According to Huez, subcontracting has three major advantages for large companies. One, reduce manual labor. Two, the contracts for polluting jobs that the company's employees do not want to accept. Three, breaking the companies' uncomfortable organizational constraints, passing the problems to others. “It is tempting for employers that the occupational doctor should become the agent of the company’s strategy.” When the law of the jungle is enforced, direct doctors become annoying witnesses to the bosses.