An amazing victory and good news for our French colleagues - French workers on sick leave now have the right to paid leaves! Congratulations @SolInfoNat and @SolidairesRedHat !
Read the whole thread for more context.
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The Working Time Directive 2003/88/EC, a key part of European labor law, requires all Member States to take the necessary measures to ensure that every worker benefits from a paid annual leave of at least four weeks in accordance with the conditions defined in the national legislation.
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The "in accordance with the conditions defined in the national legislation" part has been the caveat for French workers for many years. Under the French labor law, certain periods of employee absence were not considered actual working time. In particular, this was used for absences due to non-work-related illnesses - workers on long-term sickness leaves could not claim their paid leaves for the period of sickness.
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So what changed?
After a long legal battle among legislators and years of advocacy and public work by labor organizations, on September 13 this year, the French supreme court (Cour de cassation) ruled that employees suffering from an illness of any nature whatsoever (work-related or not) had the right to include the sickness period in their calculation for claiming paid leaves.
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Moreover, the court ruled that employees could request compensation for unused paid leaves for the entire period they worked for a company. Normally, the calculation of retroactive compensations is limited to three years in France, but this limit shall not apply if an employee was never given the option to get a paid leave in the first place by their employer.
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@SolInfoNat, one of the unions of our French Red Hat colleagues ( @SolidairesRedHat), in collaboration with other labor organizations, have been working for years to push for a proper implementation of the Working Time Directive.
More work is needed to modify the existing French labor code and its conflicting clauses, but this is a major victory for all French workers and an example for all EU members and organized labor activists.
Read the details in French: https://solidairesinformatique.org/2023/09/15/la-cour-de-cassation-a-tranche-les-salaries-en-arret-maladie-doivent-acquerir-des-droits-a-conge/
If you're in France and you didn't get your paid leave due to long-term sickness leave, reach out to your union or to @SolInfoNat who will consult you on how to exercise your rights and receive proper compensation: https://solidairesinformatique.org/contact/