Our monthly newsletter on employment matters.
1. Gender pay gap rule: reinforcement of obligations
In order to try to reduce the gender pay gap, the Law passed on 5 September 2018 imposes an obligation on companies who have more than 50 employees to assess a gender equal pay index and requires them to publish their results. A Decree issued on 8 January 2019 provides details on method, publication and consequences.
1.1 Precisions relating to the methodology for calculating the required indicators
The equal pay index is composed of indicators expressed in percentages then converted in points. Each indicator represents a number of points in order to form a total of 100 points.
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Indicator
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Points
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pay gap between men and women
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up to 40 points
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gap between the individual wage increase rate between men and woman (excluding promotions)
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up to 20 points
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gap of promotions rate between men and women
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up to 15 points
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the % of employees who received a wage increase the year they returned from maternity leave, if wage increase occurred during the time the employee was on maternity leave
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up to 15 points
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number of employees of the under-represented sex among the 10 employees who received the highest wages
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up to 10 points
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1.2 Publication process
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Obligation for the employer to publish on his website each year prior to 1 March the results of the previous year or disclosed to each employee by any means.
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Obligation to inform the Social and Economic Committee (or the Works Council, If any) through the Economic and Social Data Base (BDES)
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Sending information to the Labor Administration.
1.3 Financial penalties
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When the results fail to reach 75 out of 100, companies have 3 years to comply with the law. In this case, the professional equality collective agreement or, the employer's action plan must provide for adequate corrective measures and, if necessary, financial measures to catch up on wages.
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If the results are still below 75 after 3 years, the employer may be subject to a financial penalty that can go up to 1% of the total payroll (masse salariale).
2. Mutual termination agreement: moral harassment is not automatically a ground for nullity
Moral harassment does not affect in itself the mutual termination agreement validity. It is up to the employee who invokes the mutual termination agreement nullity to demonstrate that this situation of harassment has vitiated his consent by exercising moral violence on him, without which he would never have consented to this termination (French Supreme Court, 23 January.2019, n°17-21.550).
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