NewsletterNewsletter No.196 – April 2025
DISMISSAL AND DISCRIMINATION: An employer’s refusal to follow the occupational physician’s recommendations for a disabled employee may give rise to a presumption of discrimination based on disability.
The occupational physician had made recommendations for the adaptation of the workstation of an employee recognized as a disabled worker, which the employer refused to implement. The employee therefore claimed discrimination based on her disability. The Court of Appeal held that failure to comply with the occupational physician’s recommendations constituted a breach of the employment contract, but did not amount to discrimination. The French Supreme Court (Cour de cassation), for its part, specified that trial judges must first “determine whether the employee presents factual elements suggesting the existence of discrimination,” such as the employer’s refusal, even implicit, to implement the occupational physician’s recommendations. Then, it is appropriate to “determine whether the employer demonstrates that their refusal to take these measures is justified by objective elements unrelated to any discrimination on the grounds of disability, relating to the material impossibility of taking the measures requested or recommended or to the disproportionate nature” of their implementation by the company. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that the employer’s refusal to apply the occupational physician’s recommendations with regard to the disabled worker gave rise to the presumption of the existence of discrimination (Cass. Soc. 2 April 2025, No. 24-11.278).
VIOLATION OF THE PROTECTIVE STATUS AND COMPENSATION BY THE EMPLOYER: In the event of the null and void dismissal of a protected employee, the latter is entitled to compensation equivalent to the salary they would have received until the end of their protection period, up to a maximum of thirty months.
In this case, an employee held a position as a local representative. Claiming to be the victim of trade union discrimination, she brought the case before the labor court seeking judicial termination of her employment contract. The trial judges recognized the nullity of her dismissal, awarding her compensation equal to the minimum term of her office, namely two years, even though she had a term of office equal to that of the members of the CSE, namely four years. The Cour de cassation, for its part, ruled that a local representative is entitled to obtain “compensation for violation of the protective status equal to the remuneration that [they] would have received until the expiry of the ongoing protection period, up to a limit of thirty months” (Cass. Soc. 9 April 2025, No. 23-12.990).
MODIFICATION OF THE EMPLOYMENT CONTRACT: A change of position that meets the employee’s qualifications does not amount to a modification of the employment contract.
In this case, an employee had been hired as a physician before being assigned by his employer to the medical management of another facility. The employee sought judicial termination of his employment contract, arguing that this change of position amounted to a modification of his employment contract, since the facility, the medical management of which he was assigned to, was located 15 kilometers from his previous workplace. The Cour de cassation began by reiterating that “the employer, within the scope of their managerial authority, may change an employee’s working conditions, and the fact that the task assigned to an employee is different from that previously performed, as long as it corresponds to their qualifications, does not amount to a modification of the employment contract.” This therefore constitutes a mere change in working conditions. In this case, the Cour de cassation considered that the two positions successively held by the employee involved very similar duties, and “that the employee therefore did not lose his responsibilities“. The Court concluded that the employer had made a mere modification of the employee’s working conditions (Cass. Soc. 2 April 2025, No. 23-23.783).
TRANSFER OF CONFIDENTIAL DATA: The transfer of confidential data to a personal email account, without evidence of disclosure to third parties, is not sufficient to constitute serious misconduct justifying dismissal.
An employee was dismissed for serious misconduct after transferring confidential company data from her work email account to her personal email address. The employee contested the grounds for her dismissal. To establish serious misconduct, the Cour de cassation requires that, in addition to the transfer of confidential data “violating (…) her IT security obligations,” there be “evidence that allows (…) the attribution [to the employee] of the transmission of this confidential data to persons outside the company,” which was not established in this case. The Court therefore ruled that, given the employee’s length of service and the absence of any prior disciplinary action, the dismissal lacked real and serious cause (Cass. soc. 9 April 2025, No. 24-12.055).
DISMISSAL AND MORAL HARASSMENT: The nullity of a dismissal can only be determined if a direct link is established between the alleged moral harassment and the termination of the employment contract.
An employee who had been dismissed claimed to have suffered moral harassment from her employer. She therefore sought recognition of a link between the harassment and the dismissal, which would result in the nullity of the dismissal. The Angers Court of Appeal ruled in her favor, but the employer, who contested the merits of this decision, appealed to the Cour de cassation. The latter criticized the Court of Appeal for merely holding that “the employee established facts suggesting moral harassment and that the employer failed to establish that the alleged conduct was unrelated to any harassment,” “without establishing the fact that the employee had been dismissed for having suffered or refused to suffer moral harassment.” The dismissal could therefore not be annulled (Cass. Soc. 9 April 2025, No. 24-11.421).
JUDICIAL TERMINATION AND WORK OVERLOAD: Judicial termination of an employment contract may be ordered when the employer imposes an excessive workload on the employee that is detrimental to their health and well-being.
An employee brought a claim before the labor court seeking judicial termination of his employment contract, arguing that the employer had failed to meet their safety obligation towards him by not taking the necessary measures to monitor his working hours and workload. Reaffirming that “the right to health and rest is among the requirements of constitutional value,” the Cour de cassation found that the employer had not taken the necessary measures to ensure the employee’s safety and protect the employee’s physical health, insofar as the employee “had been subjected to a work schedule that was detrimental to his health and well-being, and had not always been able to benefit from the rest periods necessary for effective recovery, which are essential to prevent any deterioration of his state of health.” The Court thus confirmed that judicial termination may be pronounced on the grounds of work overload imposed by the employer (Cass. Soc. 2 April 2025, No. 23-20.373).