France: agreement on using French at General Electric Medical System

After a litigation which started in 2005 with all of the staff representatives of the French subsidiary of the North American company General Electric Medical System, the management and the CFDT, FO and CGT unions reached an agreement, on January 25, 2008, on using French in the group. This agreement arrives after staff representatives took this to the French Supreme Court. (Ref. 080187)
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According to the CFDT, this is the first corporate agreement concerning the application of article L. 122-39-1 (*) of the Labor Code (in application of the Toublon law of August 4, 1994) in a company with activities that are mainly international. After some employees complained because they had to work with many documents mostly written in English or English software, staff representatives had brought a lawsuit to enforce the Toublon law on using the French language in the company.


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