French Easy Employment Law
A 'solutions' guide
As a lawyer specialised in employment law for more than 20 years, I have dedicated my professional practice almost exclusively to foreign companies established in France or wishing to be so. I have created this blog to de-mystify some fears (justified or not) related to French employment law with a single objective :
​
Tiptoe through the mine field of French employment rules and creating opportunities...
French employment law shall no longer upset you !
French labour law has a bad reputation outside its borders and sometimes even within France itself. Perhaps it is well-deserved (!) but we cannot ignore the legal and regulatory rules and constraints imposed on us if we want to play the game.
Because it is a game, and a complex one at that, as the company and its employees are not the only players. Then you have to add in many other parameters and participants: staff representatives, trade unions, the labour administration, professional or non-professional magistrates, collective agreements, the occupational physician…and that’s just for starters.
​
The aim here is not to paraphrase or translate the labour code but instead to try and de-mystify French labour law by giving you a roadmap around the minefields of risk and pitfalls, plus to give you some basic understanding of the game rules. Rules which are so frightening that some people refuse from the outset to come and play or decide that they have lost too often and wish to leave France for countries where labour law is less restrictive.
Who has not heard the exasperated comment that “In France, Employment law is Hell, nothing can ever be done and everything is always impossible!”. Which HQ has not witnessed the implementation of internal policy being swatted away local HR with the utterance: "In France, this is not possible!" .
And this is before we add on the extra layer of preconceived ideas about working hours in France, not entirely unfounded as between paid holidays and the 35-hour working week laws, it is fair to say that our productivity has been badly affected.
Although no-one has ever written that it was forbidden to work more than 35 hours a week....there has been stuff published about a supposed ban on answering emails after 6PM!