Law No. 2014-743 of July 1,
2014 , concerning the procedure applicable before the labor court in the context of an employee's termination of their employment contract. This law creates Article L.1451-1 of the Labor Code:
« When the labor court is seized of a request for qualification of the termination of the employment contract initiated by the employee due to facts which the latter accuses his employer of, the case is brought directly before the judgment bureau, which rules on the merits within one month of being seized. »
The hearing before the conciliation board is eliminated.
Under these provisions, employees forced to terminate their employment contracts due to serious breaches they attribute to their employer will have their cases heard by the labor court within weeks of their formal notification of termination.
It is important to remember that an employee formally notifying the termination of their contract must file a claim with the court promptly to have the termination recognized as attributable to their employer.
Prior to this reform, employees formally notifying the termination were forced to wait many months after filing their claim for a hearing, a period during which they were unable to register with unemployment insurance agencies because the employer had not provided the termination documents.
Now, with cases being heard on their merits more quickly, employees should see their situations resolved more rapidly.
However, in practice, the legislator's objective of speed is likely to clash with the backlog in the labor courts, which will undoubtedly have difficulty scheduling these cases for hearings on short notice. Furthermore, the requirement that both parties must have finalized their agreements and exchanged documents between receiving the summons and the hearing date will likely result in the case being postponed to a later hearing… several months later.
