The French rail operator SNCF has been ordered to pay about €150m (£97m) in damages after being found guilty of discriminating against hundreds of Moroccan workers.

The employees had sued the transport company, claiming they had been deliberately passed over for promotion and offered fewer work and retirement benefits than their French and European colleagues.



On Monday, the industrial court ruled that SNCF was guilty of discrimination in “the execution of work contracts” and the retirement rights for about 800 Moroccans, most of them hired as private contract workers in the 1970s to build and maintain the rail network.



After a legal hearing in March this year, the tribunal upheld legal complaints that the Moroccans were not given the status of “railway worker” that would have entitled them to special benefits covering job security, early retirement and working hours. At the time the north Africans were taken on, only young French recruits, and later those from the European Union, were entitled to the special status.



Even those who later took French nationality and were awarded long-term contracts claimed they suffered discrimination in terms of promotion and pensions.



A total of 849 mostly retired workers sued SNCF and the court upheld nine out of 10 legal complaints. The judges awarded damages and compensation of between €150,000 and €230,000 to individual workers, many of whom had waited more than a decade for the case to be settled. The workers had claimed €400,000 each.



SNCF, which had argued in court that it was legal to distinguish between staff hired on permanent contracts and those taken on as contract workers, has a month to appeal against the legal ruling and the payouts.



The company said in a statement it had “taken on board” the tribunal’s decision and would “analyse the legal and regulatory consequences of this decision in the next few weeks.



“SNCF respected the legal requirements of the time,” it read.



As the judgment was read, the workers, known as chibanis, (grey hair in Moroccan Arabic) and their supporters, burst into applause and cries of: “Vive la République. Vive la France. Vive justice!”



Ahmed Katim, who was recruited in 1972, was in tears as he told journalists: “It’s a great satisfaction and gives the Moroccans back their dignity ... it is also the end of a 15-year battle.”



Abdelkader Bendali, a Moroccan professor who supported the rail workers, said: “SNCF must restore the honour of these people.”



Mohammed Medidi, a former railworker at Saint-Lazare station in Paris, said: “The most important thing is that SNCF has been convicted. The judges have recognised that it [the company] blocked these peoples’ careers ... SNCF dragged its heels and has been condemned finally. I’m very happy.”