Social Rights

The decision of the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR) on the merits in Confédération générale du travail (CGT) and Confédération française de l’encadrement-CGC (CFE-CGC) v. France, Complaint No. 149/2017, became public on 10 November 2021.

In their complaint, CGT and CFE-CGC, referring in particular to Act No. 2016-1088 of 8 August 2016 on labour, modernisation of the social dialogue and professional careers security (Official Gazette of the French Republic of 9 August 2016), called “the Labour Law”, alleged that:

- oncall periods, which have not led to any actual work, continue to be treated as rest periods, in breach of Article 2§§1 and 5 of the Charter;

- French legislation on the working days system still does not ensure compliance with Articles 2§1 and 4§2 of the Charter; moreover, the new legislation made the management of the working days system even more uncertain and has diminished the protection of the workers concerned.

The European Committee of Social Rights adopted its decision on the merits on 19 May 2021.

In its decision on the merits, the Committee concluded:

• unanimously that there is a violation of Article 2§1 of the Charter on the following grounds:

a. the assimilation of an on-call period to a rest period, in its entirety;

b. as regards the annual working days system:

-  the absence of statutory limitations to the maximum permissible weekly working hours;

-  the absence of adequate safeguards to guarantee reasonable working time;

-  the reference period of 12 months;

• unanimously that there is a violation of Article 2§5 of the Charter as oncall periods that are assimilated to rest periods can occur on Sundays;
• unanimously that there is a violation of Article 4§2 of the Charter as workers under the annual working days system cannot claim overtime remuneration.