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French Employment Law - Collective
Bargaining Agreements
Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA) play an important part in the employer/employee relationship in France and are generally known, in French, as «Conventions Collectives».
A CBA must be a written agreement and it would normally be comprised of a basic text plus a number of schedules, annexes and supplementary agreements; the latter flowing from modifications over time of certain points.
The CBA must be drafted in French and any provision which is set out in a language other than French is held not to be binding if it were to be to the detriment of the employee.
The aim of negotiating a CBA is to bring about a joint agreement between employers and employees, each as a body, on the conditions of work and employment of salaried employees in a particular sector of activity.
The CBA is held not only to complete and to improve the applicable statutory provisions but also to adapt the general provisions of the Code du Travail to the particular situations of a sector of activity or of a particular undertaking.
The CBA may be agreed for a pre-determined period or instead for an unlimited/open-ended period between:
· On the one hand, one or more union organisations, which are recognised nationally as being representative of salaried employees or which are affiliated to such organisations or indeed which have proved themselves to be representative in the field in which the CBA is applicable, and
· On the other hand, one or more employer representative organisations or any other grouping of employers or indeed one or more individual employers
The CBA could be applicable to
· employees working in all the branches of a specific industry or instead simply to a particular sector of activity
· all employees in France of entities subject to the CBA or instead all employees in a specific geographical area
If there is no CBA applied in a particular undertaking or company, an employee may petition his or her employee for such a collective bargaining agreement to be applied, and could do this either directly or through his or her staff delegate.
All disputes in this respect would usually be heard by the Conseil des prud'hommes or special Employment Relations Courts.
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