This is one of the key measures of the unemployment reform bill approved this Wednesday in first reading in the Assembly. “The worker who has voluntarily abandoned his position and does not return to work after being notified to that effect […] it is presumed that he has resigned”, stipulate the amendments voted by 219 votes against 68 in the hemicycle.
Specifically, if a worker no longer returns to his place of work without informing his employer and if he does not respond to the latter’s request to justify his absence, he is considered to have abandoned his position. However, “in the current state of things, it is a disciplinary offense that justifies initiating a dismissal procedure”, specifies Me Éric Rocheblave, a lawyer specializing in labor law, even if the employer is not obliged to initiate this procedure.
But the measure voted on Wednesday now presumes that it is a resignation. In case of definitive approval of the bill, the employer will therefore be exempt from the dismissal procedure and the workers who leave their post will be deprived of unemployment benefits. Because, let us remember, a worker who resigns, except in very specific cases of resignation considered legitimate in particular, does not fall into the category of workers who have lost their job involuntarily. Therefore, they are not eligible for unemployment insurance.
The Government, through the voice of the delegate minister Carole Grandjean, declared itself in favor of this measure on job abandonment, which they consider “a phenomenon in constant increase”. For his part, Dominique Da Silva (Renaissance) maintained that the job losses disrupted the companies and that it was a matter of providing a “clear and fair” measure for all.
“Move Trouble”
But, according to Me Éric Rocheblave, this amounts to “stigmatizing the abandonment of office” without seeing the reality behind it. “Discomfort in worker-management relations is constantly increasing”, he adds, before illustrating: “suffering at work is like water, you have to express it in another way and find another way out.
In fact, one can imagine that employees who want to leave their jobs but who are not granted a conventional termination by their employer will find other means of leaving work. “Such a measure is equivalent to displacing the problem,” confirms the lawyer specializing in labor law.
Voluntarily becoming responsible for serious misconduct in order to be fired or seeking a medical conciliator to take a long-term leave are, therefore, practices that could be developed. In the latter case, social security would bear the cost of the phenomenon. The lawyer also foresees an increase in the phenomenon of “silent resignation” which consists of going to work without working or doing the least.
As for the accelerated recourse to the Prud’hommes promised by the text of the law, Me Rocheblave is unappealable: “it is impossible to implement”.
Source: BFM TV
