Labor Law (France)
In France , labor law ( droit du travail ) refers to the set of legal norms that apply to the individual and collective private law relationships between employers and their paid employees.
The most important legal source of labor law is the Code du travail of 1910, which was last extensively reformed in 2008. There are also numerous special laws and collective agreements. There is a separate labor court in France for labor law . The freedom of contract is restricted in numerous points. For example, the regulations on the statutory minimum wage, the SMIC , are mandatory law .
In French and European Community law, labor law also includes social security law ( droit social ), which is referred to as social law under German law . On the other hand, it is controversial whether the law of social welfare ( aide social ) is to be included in labor law.
history
The origins of today's French labor law go back to the French Revolution . In 1791, compulsory guilds were abolished in France and the guilds were banned by law, which had previously regulated the employment relationship between worker and master in many industries. The Civil Code, introduced by Napoleon in 1804, is strongly influenced by the liberal zeitgeist of the French Revolution and leaves the contracting parties to the employment contract to determine the terms of the contract themselves , in accordance with the principle of private autonomy .
As a result of the industrial revolution , the bargaining power shifts strongly in favor of the employers, who can freely dictate the terms of the contract to the workers. The result is catastrophic working conditions for the proletariat , which the French state tried to improve slightly in 1841 through a first social law relating to the work of women and children. But it was not until the third republic that a noteworthy labor law developed. An important step was the creation of a labor inspection in 1874, which made it possible to check compliance with the law, and a law of the same year, which again aimed at improving the working conditions of women and children. Other important stages are the right to form trade unions (1884), the introduction of statutory accident insurance (1898), and the introduction of the Code du travail (1910).
In 1919 the 48-hour week (8-hour day) was introduced, and collective agreements were also defined by law. Under the Front Populaire with Léon Blum as Prime Minister, French labor law was further developed: in 1936 the 40-hour week was introduced, and for the first time every employee was granted the right to paid vacation days.
After the Second World War, the preamble of the fourth republic, which is still part of the bloc de constitutionnalité today, proclaims not only political rights but also social rights and makes France an indivisible, secular, democratic and “social” republic. In 1950 a blanket minimum wage was introduced, the SMIG, a forerunner of the SMIC . After the May riots in 1968, after negotiations with the government and employers' associations, the trade unions see their role within companies strengthened.
literature
- Jean Pélissier, Alain Supiot , Antoine Jeammaud, Gilles Auzero: Droit du travail . 24th edition. Dalloz-Sirey, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-247-08039-7 .
- Jean Mouly: Droit du travail . Breal, 2010, ISBN 978-2-7495-0940-2 .
- Corinne Pizzio-Delaporte: Droit du travail . Vuibert, 2012, ISBN 978-2-311-00901-9 .
- Gilles Auzero, Emmanuel Dockès: Droit du travail . Dalloz, 2014 ISBN 978-2-247-13009-2 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Gerhard Igl and Felix Welti : Social law. 8th edition. Werner Verlag, Neuwied 2007, ISBN 978-3-8041-4196-4 , p. 402 (Section 88 marginal number 3).
- ↑ Corinne Pizzio-Delaporte: Droit du travail. Pp. 12-13. ISBN 978-2-311-00901-9