How is this McDonald’s franchisee going to get him to sign a contract that does not comply with the Labor Code? Equipped with a hidden camera, Rebecca is received by the administrative assistant of the restaurant, visibly aware that she offers a working time below the legal minimum…
“Normally, contracts should be worth at least twenty-four hours. That’s why I’m going to ask you to write a handwritten letter, she explains to him. By saying that you want a contract of fifteen hours a week.” The Labor Code indeed clearly stipulates that “the minimum working time of a part-time employee is set at twenty-four hours a week” (article L.3123-27). To sign a contract with a working time below the legal minimum, it must be at the request of the employee.
“It’s to say that you agreed” to sign this contract
“The idea is not to lie but to justify why we did not make a bigger contractshe says to the undercover journalist. For us, it’s that we don’t need a lot of hours. Even if I know that you would like more hours, the small letter is simply to say: ‘Here, our employee would like to have a contract of fifteen hours a week.’ That’s to say that you agreed to have this contract even if it’s not what suits you 100%, but somewhere, if you came, it still suits you. “ Rebecca asks what she should write and sign…”You can put: ‘I, the undersigned, first and last name, wish to have a contract of sixty-five hours per month…’, dictates the assistant. Maybe: ‘…in order to be able to hold a second job afterwards.’ What do you think about it ?“
The assistant then shows him the availability slots on the schedule: “Every day, Monday to Friday on the beaches 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. These are indeed availability ranges within which you can be scheduled.“She must therefore be available to the McDonald’s franchisee sixty hours a week for a salary of 500 euros net per month. The availability range required by the franchisee does not respect the collective agreement for fast food restaurants. This prohibits the employer from asking its employees for availability greater than three times the number of hours they work. This McDonald’s franchisee should therefore have asked Rebecca for forty-five hours of availability.
>>> McDonald’s France CEO Nawfal Trabelsi declined to be interviewed. About this employment contract, here is what he replied in writing to “Cash Investigation”: “We share with our franchisees the attachment to strict compliance with labor law. (…) If a breach of this framework were to be observed, we would take the necessary measures to enforce these contractual conditions.”
Excerpt from “It’s like that at McDonald’s?”, an investigation by Zoé de Bussierre, broadcast Wednesday April 7, 2022 at 9:10 p.m. on France 2.
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