French man sues 20 years after firm forced him to change his name

PARIS >> Mohamed Amghar was a 40-year-old software salesman in the final stages of interviewing for a new job in November 1996 when, in his telling, his future boss made a request that left him speechless.

You’ll have to change your name to “Antoine,” the man said, even specifying, according to Amghar, not to use “Philippe” because there were already two in the office.

Amghar felt he had no choice. Still, he was ashamed and angry.

“It’s a betrayal,” said Amghar, born in Paris to Algerian parents who arrived there in 1946, when Algeria was still part of France. “You are made to understand, at 40 years old, that ‘No, Mohamed, you aren’t truly French like everyone else.’”

And so, Mohamed became Antoine on his email address, on his business card, on train and plane tickets, on name tags used at industry conferences, even on performance awards he collected over two decades at the company, Intergraph, an American software firm with French offices in Rungis, south of Paris.

Amghar, now 63 and retired, sued the company last year in a labor court in Creteil, south of Paris, accusing it of discrimination and moral harassment and asking for more than 440,000 euros (nearly $500,000) in damages. The court held a hearing in March but won’t rule until next year.

The case has stood out because few racial discrimination suits reach French courts. And it resonates powerfully as France reckons with its colonial past, racism in the police and attitudes toward racial discrimination more generally in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis.

Amghar said that, relatively speaking, he was fortunate even to get the job given France’s record of discrimination. The sales manager position involved selling engineering software to energy or chemical companies like Total or Arkema and was well paid.

He also acknowledges that he never filed an official complaint over his time at Intergraph, from 1997 to 2017.

“I thought to myself: ‘You didn’t say anything in the beginning, what are you going to say now?’” he said.

Intergraph, based in Alabama and bought in 2010 by Hexagon AB, a Swedish firm, did not deny that Amghar used a different name at the office, but said it had found no proof that management had requested the change.