PLEASE NOTE
A decree dated April 18, 2025, states that starting October 1st, workers assigned to positions requiring driving authorization or electrical certification will no longer benefit from enhanced individual health monitoring.
Instead, they must be issued a certificate by the occupational physician, valid for five years, confirming the absence of medical contraindications.
Decree No. 2025-355, April 18, 2025, Official Journal April 19
THE COURT HAS RULED
Difference in treatment cannot be justified by lack of family ties with the employer
As a reminder, according to Article L. 1132-1 of the French Labor Code, no employee may be sanctioned, dismissed, or subjected to discriminatory measures—direct or indirect—especially regarding pay, profit-sharing, stock distribution, training, reassignment, job posting, qualification, classification, promotion, transfer, or contract renewal, due to their family situation.
In this case, an employer granted higher pay to an employee on the grounds that, being his spouse, he benefited from her availability and confidentiality.
The Court of Cassation ruled that an employer cannot justify a pay difference between two employees based on the fact that one is his spouse. This constitutes prohibited discrimination based on family status.
Court of Cassation, Social Chamber, April 9, 2025, No. 23-14.016
Employee duty of loyalty
According to the Court of Cassation, transferring professional documents to a personal email account does not automatically constitute gross misconduct, as long as the documents were sent by the employee to her own personal email address and not shared with anyone else.
It was precisely this lack of distribution that led the judges to downplay the breach of the employee's duty of loyalty under Article L. 1221-1 of the French Labor Code.
They also considered the employee's long service (nearly 25 years with the company), her clean disciplinary record, and the lack of a formal reminder of her obligations prior to the initiation of the dismissal process.
Under these conditions, the judges determined that the alleged misconduct, while indeed a fault, did not amount to either gross misconduct or a legitimate reason for dismissal.
Court of Cassation, Social Chamber, April 9, 2025, No. 24-12.055
Figure
An 11.3% increase in the number of employment safeguard plans (PSE) validated or approved in the fourth quarter of 2024 compared to the previous quarter, according to data published by DARES (the French equivalent of the UK's Office for National Statistics) on April 10.
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