News: 1591796354

So Intraparfum wanted to get rid of him in 2010 after losing a contract and not having enough work left. Fair enough. But instead of just doing the normal thing of offering compensation and making him redundant. They employed him at full pay for 4 years to do nothing. Now I'm well aware that France has some very employee friendly labour laws, but I'm pretty sure that the redundancy compensation does not equal 4 years of full time pay.

Now Intraparfum have been found guilty of breaching french labour laws, which is going to cause them all sorts of problems with the unions going forward. They have paid out 4 years worth of salaries, AND they have to pay another €50k on top of that as compensation. All because they wanted to try and force someone out illegally...

Foot meet Mr Shotgun...

but I'm pretty sure that the redundancy compensation does not equal 4 years of full time pay.

The problem isn't the cost, but the sheer difficulty of getting rid of staff purely on economic grounds. They would first have to show that it would cause the company severe financial problems (i.e. risk of bankruptcy) if they had to keep people on, and prove that they could not be transferred/retrained to another position. If they did lay people off they would then have difficulty hiring anyone else in an even remotely similar position for a period (obviously don't need to lay people off if you're hiring). They could even end up in a situation where they have to take things like age, seniority and marital status into account, and someone else might get the chop with our candidate parachuted into his/her position.

Hard enough for a whole team whose project has ended, almost impossible to get rid of one person. His union would take it to a tribunal, and the cost to the company of losing that could be substantial.

I've seen it happen multiple times over several years, and the only reason the company in question was able to get rid of people at all was that the orders came from HQ in another country, and the unions realised that refusing to co-operate would just get the whole French subsidiary closed. They did a deal where they wouldn't make waves if the annual numbers laid off stayed below 10% and the redundancy payments were big enough.

Perhaps companies might consider the possibility of using existing employees for open positions, rather than just throwing them away on a whim?

"Perhaps companies might consider the possibility of using existing employees for open positions, rather than just throwing them away on a whim?"

All employees are interchangeable now?

Then surely they should have taken the German option, brought a bakery and made this gentleman a bicycle delivery boy until he decided to move on...

Perhaps companies might consider the possibility of using existing employees for open positions, rather than just throwing them away on a whim?

Of course, if there is such a position which the employee is suited, or can be retrained, for. Always better and cheaper than layoffs.

I've seen 80% of current salary until retirement age and a fully paid up pension offered to anyone in their mid 50s, it utterly p'd off everyone just under the cutoff. For the much younger the resulting uplift in job roles was very nice.

I've seen 80% of current salary until retirement age and a fully paid up pension offered to anyone in their mid 50s

I grab that in a heartbeat!

"The problem isn't the cost, but the sheer difficulty of getting rid of staff purely on economic grounds."

Yeah, you know what? BS.

/Plenty/ of French companies manage to do it. Really. Look it up, I'm rather sure it's a matter of public knowledge. Yes, even small ones, they can do it.

Another thing worth looking up: Interparfums, it's not a small mom'n'pop shop. It's 300 persons with a little less than € 500 millions of turnover, and worth € 1.5 billion.

So that particular company management acted in a moronic way, which also happened to be illegal in France. Now they know, they'll hopefully pull their fingers out of their asses, and start doing the job *they*'re paid for.

https://www.boursorama.com/cours/societe/profil/1rPITP/

Yeah, you know what? BS.

Not in the slightest. I've worked in France for 30 years, and have seen this in many companies. Laying people off as "licenciement économique" is possible but is a slow, painful and expensive process, governed by old laws that aren't well-adapted to modern industries.

Another thing worth looking up: Interparfums, it's not a small mom'n'pop shop. It's 300 persons with a little less than € 500 millions of turnover, and worth € 1.5 billion.

Which makes it much harder, a small business has more flexibility.

instead of just doing the normal thing of offering compensation and making him redundant. They employed him at full pay for 4 years to do nothing.

In Japanese organisations this is known as being given a "window seat". Its a role where you have nothing to do all day but look out of the window. It's used as a punishment for serious failure or negligence and because they do not wish to break their social contract (in Japan) of a job is a job for life.

My current bank isn't Japanese but we use the same system here, just less formally. I've had bosses that were useless be transferred to a "similar" role in a different part of the organisation, which meets our employment legislation requirements but in reality is moving them out of the way until they decide to resign for themselves. It's usually cheaper because while they may have a 6 figure redundancy accrual, it usually doesn't take more than 5 or 6 months before they quit.

I noticed that in the UK Civil Service there was a unsaid maxim that "If you have a personnel problem Ignore them as eventually they will leave by them selves" however... at least one person I know of stayed for several years of having a window seat before action was finally taken. Some people are very hard to bore, well they were civil servants!

When I was in the civil service, this was known as a sideways promotion, ie a nominal promotion, into a position where the promotee couldn't do any further harm

They were more concerned about their bottom line than the health of their employee or the law. They got what they deserved.

And you have to ask, if they choose to do this then what other shortcuts might they be taking with their legal obligations, their work practices and/or their products?

I worked for the French subsidiary of a multinational headquartered in the USA. There was a boss who everybody hated and he allegedly had a list of people who he'd like to get rid of given the chance. Well he was given that chance as he was put in charge of the headcount reduction for France. Out came the alleged list as did the at risk of redundancy discussions with those staff on this list. Heads of Departments were just told they would be losing these people - there would be no discussions about this.

A few people told him they'd happily take the money because they'd not have to work under him anymore. Some of these people were effectively irreplaceable and they were people we didn't want to lose. That didn't bother him, staff were expected to cope without their colleagues and their skills.

That was a pain and much grumbling was made but some people were happy to go. A month after staff had left word reaches head office in the USA about the situation. The fact that there had been a hit list had not gone down well. A senior Vice President was dispatched and arrived in France unannounced to see the boss. The VP held a meeting with him and the French HR director. They fired him on the spot (no one knows on what grounds) asking him to collect any personal items before he was escorted out of the building. He was from the account I heard furious and threatened to talk to lawyers etc. as he reached reception.

The VP then called a meeting of all the Heads of Departments. He apologised for inaction from the USA. He then asked who had been lost who was needed and who was a waste of space who could go instead. Sadly some of those who had gone already had new jobs and couldn't come back. In one case a bloke was on the equivalent of gardening leave and he was recalled from this. Another (a very talented product designer) just said no thanks no matter how much was on offer. I was one of those who was very glad to see the back of this bloke. I couldn't understand how he had been allowed so much power and then allowed to abuse it.

4 years, not a bad attempt at holding out against such an insidious employment practise.

As he's French I doubt it's a record though, Can you work from home?

Seems like an ideal opportunity to recommend Micky Flanagan's take on the French.

WARNING - NSFW.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEttOCXL1DE

This was from Tiswas and allegedly aimed at children. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlY5z1CZx9M

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlY5z1CZx9M

Le congé de jardin ou le congé de jardinage décrit la pratique dans laquelle un employé qui a quitté son emploi - ayant démissionné ou ayant eu son emploi en cessation d'emploi a été mis au courant - est tenu de rester à l'écart du travail au cours de la période de préavis tout en demeurant sur la liste de paie. Cette pratique est souvent utilisée pour empêcher les employés de prendre avec eux des informations à jour lorsqu'ils quittent leur employeur actuel, surtout lorsqu'ils partent pour rejoindre un concurrent. Le terme est issu de la fonction publique britannique où les employés ont le droit de demander un congé spécial à des fins exceptionnelles. Le «congé de jardinage» est devenu un euphémisme pour «suspendu» en tant qu'employé qui a été formellement suspendu en attendant une enquête sur leur conduite demanderait souvent de sortir du bureau en congé spécial à la place. Le terme a été largement répandu dans le public en 1986, lorsqu'il a été utilisé dans la sitcom de la BBC Oui, Premier ministre, épisode "One Of Us". Les employés continuent de recevoir leur salaire normal pendant un congé de jardin et doivent respecter leurs conditions d'emploi, telles que la confidentialité, au moins jusqu'à l'expiration de leur période de préavis.

But this isn't a case of 'gardening leave'.

I just found it funny that the English phrase 'gardening leave' had been translated into French due to 'Yes, Minister'. It is weird which UK TV the French watch. Apparently big fans of 'Hamish Macbeth', due to Robert Carlyle.

I ken this case isn't gardening leave, but I've seen a wheen of ways to force employees out, and been subject to a few. First job, late 80s, non union, a senior female operator was sacked because she was whiney. She won her unfair dismall tribunal and was awarded £2500, which the company paid rather than remploy her. 4 months salary and career death.

I later endured far worse myself just to pay the mortgage - the law improved but it drove the same practicises underground and more evil. Ask me for stories and I will bore you silly.

Yes, Prime Minister

Garden leave or gardening leave describes the practice in which an employee who has left his job - who has resigned or has had his job terminated has been made aware - is required to stay away from work during the notice period while remaining on the payroll. This practice is often used to prevent employees from taking up-to-date information with them when they leave their current employer, especially when they leave to join a competitor. The term comes from the British civil service where employees have the right to request special leave for exceptional purposes. "Gardening Leave" has become an understatement for "suspended" as An employee who has been formally suspended pending an investigation into their conduct would often ask to leave the office on special leave instead. The term was widely used in the public in 1986, when it was used in the BBC sitcom Yes, Prime Minister, episode "One Of Us". Employees continue to receive their regular wages during garden leave and must comply with their conditions of employment, such as confidentiality, at least until the end of their notice period.

I would have been doing something profitable from my laptop if it had been me.

I would have been doing something profitable from my laptop if it had been me.

Sadly no. That would have been Computer Misuse and grounds for dismissal.

Actually, no. The law in France allows using your work computer for personal activities, as long as it's reasonable use and don't interfere with your work. Which would clearly be easy to prove here, right?

However, full-time contracts are very often exclusive, which makes it difficult for the employee to get another job.

https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F1945

I did say "my" laptop. And would have been using "my" mobile data dongle. Wouldn't trust a work network not to intercept my personal stuff.

Time to write that novel (or trilogy considering it was four years) of course you would have to be careful that they couldn't dismiss you for doing something not related to company work.

So they paid him during four years instead of cutting him loose and giving him his compensation.

I doubt his compensation was a year of salary, and I doubt even more that he worked for minimum wage.

I wonder what beancounter calculated that that was a good idea ? And besides, there has to be a point after which continuing to pay him to do nothing costs more than firing him with compensation.

Somebody didn't run the numbers on this.

I get horrible flashbacks to an old employer of mine when I read this.

Not that they did anything wrong, it's just that they were an agency with sometimes way too much work on and sometimes way too little. That's just how agency life often works. When you were working 14 hour days for weeks on end to get the job done (or to win that pitch) you'd always long for the quiet days. But the quiet days, when they finally arrived, were the worst. You'd think it would be time to finally catch up on some admin or do that background research you'd always wanted to do but didn't have the bandwidth for. Alas, the complete lack of pressure and demoralising atmosphere meant that you actually did even less of that than in the busy times. Think of past weeks of lockdown at home, but now at the office...

Having nothing to do at work is the worst.

I once wrote a sudoku solver in VHDL while waiting for a contract to end. Would be suitable for FPGA implementation and I was planning on putting it in a FPGA dev system with DVI in and out so it could solve any sudoku on the input and substitute the solution on the output in real time. Sadly, have been too busy for the last fifteen years to complete it.

I once had a summer internship (~2000) with not much to do. On one occasion, when I told my boss I was done with my assignment and asked what he wanted me to do next, he said "Go read a book!" (That's a direct quote!)

I was plinking around with Java, and wrote a program to work out a solution to a peg solitaire game (English standard version, apparently) I had on my Palm III. (My program was a depth-first recursive search, but not terribly efficiently written. Ah, the follies of youth.) I ran it for a week straight on an extra office machine, only to come up with a solution myself before the program could...

Perhaps the reason your slow days were really bad is that you were overstressed from the fast days and actually needed the time to recover? What you're describing sounds similar to how people often talk about intermittent burnout.

I used to work for the subsidiary of a international company whose head office was in Paris. We had to travel over once or twice a month for training or to discuss progress on technically advanced projects. The Head of Engineering (in Paris) was due to retire and his two deputies were vying for the succession. Each deputy had their own team and was very office-political; there was no free exchange of ideas, information or personnel between factions. They sat at opposite ends of a (big) office with a clear no-mans-land.

When the appointment was made the fallout was awful; the losing deputy manager retired, the successful group got all the new and prestigious projects, the other team were left with scraps of the end of long projects (and any poisonous contracts) or with nothing to do. They were simply ignored. These were highly skilled and (to us) likeable people but who happened to be allied to the wrong leader.

Our (UK) team had great fun on these trips; both factions seemed to resent our bonhomie. The end result was closure of the UK subsidiary!

This reminded me of a Frenchman who only had 10% of his brain tissue, was found to be living normally and working a a civil servant.

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-man-who-lives-without-90-of-his-brain-is-challenging-our-understanding-of-consciousness

I have a dumb question. Why was the constructive dismissal (by trying to bore him to death) forbidden but there's no mention here of sacking him because of a health issue being illegal?