An employee who watches a football game during working hours at his workplace is, in principle, guilty. But, in fact, there is “a tolerance”, except when security is at stake. “The labor code does not contemplate all the possible and imaginable faults of an employee,” explains Christophe Noël, a lawyer specializing in labor law. “But the employee is supposed to work during his working time and not engage in private activities.”
A sanction that must be proportional
Thus, article L3121-1 establishes that “the duration of effective work is the time during which the worker is at the disposal of the employer and complies with his directives without being able to freely exercise his personal occupations.”
Judges have already had to decide these types of cases. In some cases, this has been considered grounds for dismissal; in others, the judges considered that the sanction should be proportional to the offense and the damage to the company. In disciplinary matters, there is “a cardinal principle in labor law, that of proportionality of the sanction in relation to the seriousness of the offense,” underlines the lawyer. “There are degrees between reprimand, oral or written reprimand, dismissal and even dismissal. Firing an employee for watching a game is a bit of coffee,” he believes.
Security employees among dismissal cases
“The cases in court range from a warehouse worker caught watching surveillance video to … an airline pilot watching a game on his cell phone.” Among the cases of dismissal, Christophe Noël cites employees in charge of security, such as construction guards, security guards or employees in charge of video surveillance, who “as a result, no longer do what they do”.
Of the approximately “12 million French people in front of their televisions, some are supposed to work,” he notes. “But there is a tolerance and the companies act with intelligence. In general, when there is a football game during office hours, it is customary, when the employee is not assigned to a sensitive position, to be able to see it. And it’s going relatively well.”
Source: BFM TV
