France: the role of alternative measures to redundancies in managing the crisis

Faced with the economic impact of the health crisis, many companies that have found themselves compelled to curtail their business operations have begun restructuring. Besides making personnel redundant, such firms can make use of the various mechanisms introduced by the successive reforms of France’s labour code, such as the collective performance agreement (accord de performance collective [APC]), collective conventional termination of contract (rupture conventionnelle collective [RCC]), and the long-term short-time working scheme (activité partielle de longue durée [APLD]). Are these tools, which must also be the fruit of social dialogue, relevant? Are they suited to the current crisis? We spoke to company lawyers and experts working with employee representatives to find out more.
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Options providing alternatives on paper to job cuts. President Macron’s labour reform ordinances, which were adopted in 2017 (see article n°10330), introduced new alternative measures, the main common feature of which was the requirement to negotiate a company agreement. The measures include the collective conventional termination of contract (RCC), which allows unions to negotiate a plan under which there is a certain number of voluntary departures, outside periods of economic difficulty, and

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