Pascal (first name changed) asked the company ERI for 200,000 euros in damages for non-compliance with security obligations and 100,000 euros for prejudice to anxiety, said his lawyer, Me Leïla Messaoudi.
In parallel with his procedure before the industrial tribunal, this 39-year-old worker filed a criminal complaint.
Judicial information has been opened at the public health center of the Paris court since October 12 for endangering others and employment of a worker whose activity exposes him to ionizing radiation without a compliant risk assessment or compliance with prevention rules. .
Pascal claims to have worked more or less without respiratory protective equipment for twenty years and to have been informed only at the end of 2015 of the presence of asbestos in the electrical networks of the metro that he was dismantling.
Despite the appearance that year of the "asbestos risk" on his job description, complete protective equipment remains, according to him, extremely rare and no containment measure for the areas under work has been put in place.
He "knows that he will declare cancer or an incurable disease within a few years: he lives with that", underlined Me Messaoudi at the end of the hearing.
"When we go to work, it's to live, it's to meet our needs, it's not to die there".
Hired at ERI in 2001 and on sick leave since 2020, Pascal also requested the judicial termination of his contract.
ERI provided all the protective equipment to the workers, in particular against noise, and the asbestos removal work was carried out before the intervention of Pascal and his colleagues, assured Me Gonzalez.
"We never had an alert" on a risk of exposure to asbestos "from Pascal or his colleagues", she insisted.
By accusing ERI, Pascal "seeks by all means to leave" his job, according to the lawyer.
The prud'hommes will render their decision on September 8.
© 2023 AFP