This is a situation that may seem grotesque but could happen again, especially with the rise of telework and the expatriation of inhabitants of large cities to rural areas. This Friday, April 22, we learned that the Versailles Court of Appeal confirmed the dismissal of an employee of a company in Yvelines who had moved … to Morbihan.
Dismissal for misconduct
The man had been hired in September 2015 as technical manager of a company located in Carrières-sur-Seine in the Yvelines. Three years later, in 2018, he had moved more than 400 kilometers away, in Morbihan. The following year, in 2019, the man was fired for misconduct. His employer had asked him to return to live in the Paris region, but the man had apparently not complied. The employer therefore justified the dismissal “due to the fixing of his domicile in a place too far from his places of professional activity and in violation of the stipulations of his employment contract”.
The court confirms this dismissal twice, explanations:
For the first time, in 2020, the industrial tribunal of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the Yvelines agreed with the employer. The Versailles Court of Appeal therefore confirmed this in a judgment delivered on March 10.
For his part, the employee had put forward several arguments, explaining in particular that he had never been late for his work since his installation in Brittany, and that this move had not resulted in an extension of his journey time. He had also appealed to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights which protects “the free choice of domicile”.
Arguments rejected by the courts, which recalled the duty of the employer to ensure the preservation of the health and safety of the employee. The Court of Appeal of Versailles considered that the employee went too far to be able to carry out “reasonably the assigned missions”. The judges also took into account a request made by the employee who had, by email, requested his transfer to Brittany in view of the fatigue generated by the journeys.