France legislates to help limit the economic fallout of COVID-19

France has legislated extensively in an attempt to limit the impact of the COVID-19 health crisis on businesses and their workers. Learning from the lessons of 2008, many of these measures aim to avoid mass economic layoffs in order for the country and businesses to be ready to bounce back. Below is a summary of the key labour and employment measures enacted by the laws, decrees, and ordinances.

Adapting Labour and Employment Rules 

• Derogations from the rules on working hours, weekly rest and Sunday rest; possibility of modifying the dates of RTT, of rest days for employees in lump sum agreements in days and CET days, and, with the authorisation of a company or branch agreement, paid holidays up to six days, by derogating from the advance notice period;
• Revision of the terms and conditions for the allocation of the statutory supplementary allowance paid in the event of sick leave to broaden the scope of eligible employees;
• Flexibility in deadlines for the payment of profit sharing and the special “purchasing power” bonus;
• Facilitation of the use of videoconferencing and dematerialised consultation of the CSE (Works Council);
• Postponement of professional elections;
• Rearrangement of Short-Time Work, to open up this possibility to other categories of workers (house-workers, childcare workers); adaptation of the social scheme for Short-Time Work compensation.

Flichy Grangé Avocats is there to assist you in the implementation of these new measures. For more information, please visit www.flichygrange.com or contact comfga@flichy.com.

For more information please contact Joseph Granato, Communications Manager at L&E Global at joseph.granato@leglobal.org.