Economics
Getting Fired in France Doesn’t Pay Like It Used To
Macron’s reforms will reduce the power of labor courts over severance.
A job seeker at a Pole Emploi national employment agency in Toulouse, France, on Jan. 19, 2017.
Photographer: Balint Porneczi/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Eric Malenfer, who runs a land-surveying business in the Paris suburb of Sevres, was taken aback when two employees of a small consulting firm he’d just acquired told him they wanted to be fired.
Malenfer refused after they said they wanted a payout. The two wouldn’t take no for an answer. They stopped coming to work regularly and failed to do assigned tasks, he said. Then when he fired them, they sued the company for wrongful dismissal. A labor tribunal upheld one worker’s claim, awarding him 50,000 euros ($59,100). Unwilling to gamble, Malenfer settled with the other for the same amount.