Case Law Alert: Redeployment and Selection Criteria

If the list of redeployment offers circulated prior to a redundancy plan does not mention the criteria for deciding between employees when there are several applications for a job, the redundancy will be devoid of real and serious cause.

If a list of redeployment positions is circulated, the list must contain the information required by law for all redeployment offers (such as job title and description, employer’s name, nature of the employment contract, location, level of remuneration and job classification), but the list must also state the criteria for deciding between employees when there are more than one application for the same position, and the deadline for employees to submit their written application (Article D. 1233-2-1 of the French Labour Code).

In the case at hand, the employer had circulated a list of positions available for redeployment as part of a mass redundancy plan, but had not set out the criteria for deciding between employees when there were several applications for a position. The employer claimed that this was merely a procedural irregularity, and the employees argued that this rendered their redundancy without real and serious cause.

The French Supreme Court (Cour de cassation) has confirmed that the dismissal lacked real and serious cause because, in the absence of any reference to selection criteria in the list of internal redeployment offers, “the offer is imprecise in that it does not provide the information required to give employees the tools they need to make their decision, which amounts to a breach by the employer of its redeployment obligation and deprives the redundancy of real and serious cause.” (Cass. soc., 8 Jan. 2025, no. 22-24.724, B+L)