Definition: meal vouchers, an optional benefit
Restaurant vouchers are an optional benefit that companies can put in place to allow their employees to pay all or part of the price of the meal “included in their daily working hours. »
Principle of equal treatment
Like any advantage, the allocation of restaurant vouchers must respect the principle of equal treatment. They must therefore benefit, under the same conditions of allocation, to all employees placed in a similar or comparable situation.
A difference in treatment is only authorized when it is based on objective and relevant criteria, excluding any discrimination: for example, the fact of reserving restaurant vouchers only for employees whose domicile is located more than 10 minutes from the workplace ( CA Nîmes, March 27, 2012, n°10-41.44 ).
Employees working from home and meal vouchers
The Covid-19 having imposed the use of telework for many companies, the question inevitably arose as to whether employees in telework could retain the advantages they enjoyed when they were on site, and in particular the restaurant vouchers.
More specifically, the question that arose is whether restaurant vouchers, allocated to on-site employees, can be refused to teleworking employees because they are teleworking.
Two recent decisions have provided a contradictory answer to this question.
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They are not in a comparable situation for the Nanterre court
In a decision of March 10, 2021, the said court ruled that employees working from home did not have to bear the additional cost of catering outside the home, so that the employer could refuse them the allocation of meal vouchers. . The judges notably considered that the employees placed in telework “are it at their home” , hence, according to them, the absence of such an additional cost, since they can prepare their meal at home.
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They are in a comparable situation for the Paris court
In a decision of March 30, 2021, the said court ruled that the employer, in the case in question, did not demonstrate that telework employees were placed in a different situation from on-site employees, based on the subject restaurant vouchers. The judges recalled that the purpose of these titles, with regard to the applicable provisions, was to allow employees to eat when their meal is included in their daily work schedule. However, with regard to this object, an employee working from home, when his meal is included in his working hours, is not in a different situation from that of an employee on site.
The judges also rejected the plea raised by the employer according to which the employees in telework could have a kitchen, by adopting on this point, unlike the Nanterre judicial court, a strict interpretation of the definition of telework given in article L. 1222-9 of the Labor Code . These provisions define telework as a form of work organization allowing the performance of work outside the company's premises, without being limited to the employee's home, via information and communication technologies. .
Opinion on meal vouchers
The position of the Paris court appears to us to be better founded, on the legal level, than that of the Nanterre court. The reading of the aforementioned article L. 1222-9 does not in fact limit telework to the performance of work at the employee's home. In addition, the purpose of the restaurant voucher is to allow an employee to pay for his meal which he must take during his working hours, which may concern employees working from home, in particular if they do not work at home. or if they are unable to prepare a meal, for example for reasons of time.
The mere situation that an employee is teleworking cannot therefore, in our view, in view of the applicable regulations, constitute an objective and relevant criterion justifying a difference in treatment with on-site employees concerning the allocation of meal vouchers.
Urssaf's position
Note that the position of the Paris court agrees with that of Urssaf. Urssaf considers that if the company has a meal voucher system, teleworkers whose day begins before the lunch break and ends after, must be able to benefit from it as long as their working conditions are equivalent to those of workers carrying out their activity on company premises.
