Brutal management, dismissed agents, anti-union repression... What's happening at INSEE?

After forty-two years of service at the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies ( INSEE ), Pascal ^I could have hoped, on the eve of retirement, for a more honourable epilogue to his prolific career within the department reporting to the Ministry of Finance. The man who presents himself as "a pure product of INSEE" was already imagining a farewell party in the form of a grand finale.

Yet it was a broken man who, in April 2024, abruptly left this "house" whose ranks he had climbed since his entry in 1982 as a statistical attaché, passing through various functions, up to this last post of superintendent within the Sesam division.

For a year, the young retiree has been reliving the memory of April 4, 2024, when everything changed. That day, Karine Berger , the secretary general of INSEE, his "N + 2," berated him in front of the twenty people present in the reception hall of the institute. His "fault": not having anticipated the long queue that overflowed outside the building. Busy at the time with a more urgent matter, it had taken his boss too long to go downstairs to resolve the problem.

"Get out of here, you're fired!" she shouts at him after a barrage of reproaches.