France: What is the law on age discrimination?

This article describes the current state of the law on age discrimination in the workplace in France, how claims are processed and the potential penalties for employers. French age discrimination legislation has been thrown into the spotlight in light of the most recent national measures on the employment of older workers (derived from a national inter-industry collective agreement and a government policy on the employment…

France: New items for 2018 French HR agenda

Pursuant to various HR law reforms in 2017, most of which are applicable as of 2018, your HR department will need to take immediate action to bring your company into compliance. Here is an overview of the most significant measures. Goodbye Works Council, hello Social and Economic Committee! In all companies, Staff Delegates, the Works Council and the Health and Safety Committee must be replaced…

France: The labour law reform

Following his election, President Macron announced major reforms starting with a large-scale overhaul of labour law. So, what are the most important changes that will impact your day-to-day HR management? The main goals of this reform are to provide more security for work relationships, to give companies more flexibility, more power to negotiate working conditions directly with employees and to reduce their financial exposure in…

France: Major changes to whistleblowing laws

Until recently, there was no obligation to implement a whistleblowing policy in France. However, when such a policy was put in place very strict regulations applied. These included obtaining prior authorisation, which was only very reluctantly granted, from the French data protection agency (the “CNIL”). Law of 9 December 2016 on transparency, the fight against corruption and the modernisation of the economy (referred to as…

Religion in the workplace: French perspective

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) recently issued two rulings, on 14 March 2017, regarding religion in the workplace, one a Belgian case, the other a French one. On 15 March 2017, we reported on the Belgian case in detail (see: European Court of Justice Rules for the first time on Discrimination Based on Belief). In what follows, we set out our reaction to the…

France: New regulations in 2017

The ‘Employment’ Act of 8 August 2016 has initiated the rewriting of the labour code: collective agreements must become central and the law must become more subsidiary. In concrete terms, the labour code will set out for each of its ‘themes’: public order rules (which can not be changed or negociated); measures that can be negotiated; the measures that apply in the absence of an…

EURO 2016 or work, do we really have to choose?

We’ve just put the rackets away and it’s already time to take out the football cleats. The EURO 2016 started on Friday 10 June and with it arises the perpetual question of whether it is possible to watch matches at work. Both the astute and the disgruntled may be surprised to see this type of article flourishing around the time of the EURO, since the…

Employers must look for a purchaser before closing a site in France

Multinational employers with smaller sites in France quite often are surprised to hear that, during international restructurings, the requirements of French law may cause them to rethink their timeline, strategy and/or general approach when implementing measures that affect their French entity. We describe one such special requirement which has the potential to make restructurings grind to a halt. Requirement to search for a purchaser in…

The legal framework for traineeships in France

Changes to legislation in the past years have changed the landscape for employing trainees in France. We provide a brief overview of the current legal framework. What are the general principles? Under the law in force since 12 July 2014 regarding traineeships and professional training periods (Law n°2014-788, dated 10 July 2014), the legislator wanted to accomplished three objectives: to encourage the development of good…

Capstan TV: Employee Violence

French companies looking to restructure or close sites may have to anticipate a lot of employee pushback. Recent press has extensively covered cases where staff did not even shrink from physical violence against managers and senior employees. This of course raises a multitude of questions – how can companies protect themselves and their staff, and not endanger the restructuring process at the same time? In…