Is there no wand for Labor Day? If many bakeries remain in practice open every year on this date, their activity on May 1 is actually very supervised by law, which prohibits them from making employees work that day.
In case of breach of the rules, financial sanctions are provided: 750 euros fine for an employee and 1,500 euros for an apprentice. Some bakers recently paid the price “after checks made in bakeries in Vendée on May 1, 2024 by the Labor Inspection, which are now assigned to the Police Court,” said the National Bakery Confederation. Five bakeries in the department would have been sanctioned last year.
According to the Labor Code, only companies that “due to the nature of their activity cannot interrupt the work” are authorized to work in employees on May 1. However, bakeries are not part of it. In other words, “the boss can open” that day whenever there are no employees present, he emphasizes in BFMTV Dominique Anract, president of the Bakers Confederation. This implicitly is equivalent to the obligation to close for a series of companies.
“Reason in a case -By -Sa Base”
There are still exceptions. A bakery can open as soon as it manages to demonstrate that its activity is essential. But the law is blurred. For the Bakery Confederation, “you have to reason on a case base.” Therefore, the organization believes that “a bakery that offers hospitals, criminal establishments or nursing homes could be considered to comply with the criteria of the law, namely, which exercises an activity that does not allow to interrupt its work on May 1, essential for the continuity of social life, since it contributes to an essential need for the public.”
Otherwise, “only commercial leaders can work or even family members whenever they are not employees of the company,” continues the Confederation. An ubiquitous situation for the profession that claims an evolution of the law: “Obviously, there is an interest in the bakery” that is recognized as “an essential trade”, Judges Dominique Anract, remembering that the appeal to employees will be done anyway on the basis of volunteering, since the law provides a double paid day.
Soon a legislative change?
Discussions have been initiated on this issue between the Confederation of Bakers and the Ministry of Labor. But while waiting for the conclusions and “due to the important whims on the subject”, the Confederation “defends” so that the bakers “do not work on their employees on May 1 to an additional warning.”
An instruction that will not be respected by all. “We want to work on May 1. I think we are ready to run the risk. We must defend our profession,” said BFMTV Clément Buisson, Baker in the 16th Paris District. Others should do the same, as is the case every year.
Even the Minister of Labor, Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, is favorable to the opening of the bakeries on May 1: “I want to bet on collective intelligence and say” let’s continue working “… (…) this is part of the French culture, they are important professions. If it is voluntary (…) we must be able to leave things (to do),” he said in BFMTV, while specifying that the controls It is “autonomous” and on which it has no “power.” Ultimately, “only the law can defeat this complexity”, it is “only with the legislators” that the rules can be modified, concluded the minister.
Source: BFM TV
