An employer has just been ordered to pay 30,000 euros in damages to an employee. Reason: she was 100% teleworking and he wanted to force her to come to the office.
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The case takes on a particular resonance at a time when employers must adopt teleworking more widely. He felt that in this matter, the habits of one of his employees were excessive. For several years, she worked entirely from home and only occasionally came to the premises of her company. A well-established habit. Except that the employer suddenly wanted to put an end to this situation and force him to come to headquarters every Monday and Tuesday.
Except that this posed serious problems for this employee because she lived far from her company. Coming to work on Mondays and Tuesdays required her to leave her home on Sunday evening, take a hotel room for the night from Sunday to Monday and Monday to Tuesday, at her expense. The employee preferred to terminate her employment contract by asking the industrial tribunal for a judicial resolution of her employment contract to the fault of the employer. She asked the judges to recognize that, by this change, her employer was in effect dismissing her. She accused him of having unilaterally changed an essential element of his employment contract, namely the place of work, without his consent. Which amounted to dismissing her.
The case went to the Orléans Court of Appeal, which has just delivered its judgment. For her, this 100% teleworking had become a practice over the years. And the sudden change in the workplace upset the employee’s personal life and endangered his health. Legally, an employer must have an amendment to the employment contract signed by an employee on whom he imposes a new place of work. If the employee refuses to sign this rider, then two possibilities: either the employer renounces, or he dismisses the employee. What he should have done in this case. The 30,000 euros in damages awarded to the employee therefore correspond to the severance pay that the employee should have received.
The Court of Cassation had already ruled in this direction, recognizing the tacit existence of teleworking without it being mentioned in the employment contract. But beware, not everyone can sue their employer because they have ended a habit of teleworking. The practice must be old, it must be well established and the end of teleworking seriously disrupts the life of the employee.