On 25 March 2020, France’s Council of Ministers adopted three ordinances under the Emergency Bill of 23 March 2020 to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic (c.f. article No. 11749). One of the three gives employers greater means both to impose or modify leave-taking and the taking of rest-days, as well as to derogate from the Labor Code and collective conventions as regards the right to rest periods, all of which is a bid to cope with the uncertainties surrounding activity due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
As intended by the enabling law, these three ordinances address daily allowances (an extension of the additional allowance benefit paid by employers), incentive bonuses and profit sharing (deferral of payment dates), unemployment insurance (extended rights), and also leave periods and working time duration. As regards the length of working time, the ordinance ‘that addresses emergency measures over paid leave, the length of working time, and rest days’ allows:
- Sector or company agreements that can define the conditions under which employers, by way of a derogation from the legal and conventional provisions over work time duration and the taking of paid leave periods, within the limit of six days’s leave and with one day notice :
- Decide on the taking of paid leave that employees have acquired, ‘including prior to the start of the period during which they normally should be taken,’
- Unilaterally modify the dates on which paid leave is taken
- Split holiday periods
‘Imposed or modified leave periods as applied by this article cannot extend beyond 31 December 2020,’ the ordinance clarifies.
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