Court of Cassation, Social Div., June 11, 2025, no 24-11.683
In 2010, an employee was hired as an apprentice shift supervisor. Based on the occupational doctor’s recommendation, he moved to a machine operator position that was adapted to his medical condition in 2014, with no changes being made to his employment contract.
He was made redundant in 2019. The termination letter stated that this was due to the impossibility of maintaining his original position as shift manager.
The employee claimed that his redundancy was unfair because he had not held this position since 2014, and the employer failed to provide evidence that the position he had held until his dismissal had been eliminated.
The Court of Appeal rejected the claim, on the grounds that the employee “could not argue that his termination letter referred to his duties as shift manager, whereas at the time of his redundancy he had held the adapted position of machine operator”, since his latter “duties did not correspond to his recruitment and could not be considered definitive”.
The Court of Cassation quashed this decision and ruled that the Court of Appeal could not consider that the redundancy to be justified since “the employer had failed to justify the need to eliminate the machine operator position actually occupied by the employee at the time of redundancy”.
Therefore, redundancy must be based on the position effectively occupied at the date of redundancy and not only on contractual provisions.
The fate of the position formerly held by the employee is irrelevant.