Airbus employees, subcontractors, everyone is concerned !
To comply with European Union law, the French Cassation Court (Cour de Cassation) issued several rulings on September 13, 2023, improving employees’ rights to paid leave. Notably, it allows for the accrual of paid leave during a work stoppage due to illness or non-occupational accident. Subsequently, a law was adopted on April 22, 2024, to bring French law into line with European law.
What are we talking about?
From now on, ALL stoppages (illness, work accident, or occupational disease) constitute periods of actual working time for determining the duration of leave (similar to maternity leave, for example) with no time limit, meaning for the entire duration of the work stoppage.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The law limits paid leave entitlements generated by an absence due to illness or non-occupational accident to 2 working days per month (instead of the usual 2.5), and it caps this at 24 working days per reference period (from January 1 to December 31).
Lack of information from management
Going forward, at the end of each work stoppage, the employer must inform each employee of the number of paid leave days they have accrued and the date by which these leave days must be taken.
Despite requests from your CGT representatives on the CSE (Social and Economic Committee), management has not communicated to inform you about your rights, which are retroactive to December 1, 2009.
How to claim your paid leave rights accrued since December 1, 2009?
The employer must therefore recalculate your paid leave entitlements and allocate to each concerned employee an additional number of leave days to be taken in application of the aforementioned case law and law.
You have a limited time to make this request; otherwise, your rights will be lost. We therefore advise you to contact us as soon as possible to assert your rights.
Initially, you must send your request to reward-ops.fr.congesetmaladie@airbus.com, indicating, if possible, the dates of your work stoppages (a template email is available here via the QR code below).
For work stoppages longer than two years, management is dragging its feet, refusing to apply the texts, and trying to invent its own rules, but here too, the CGT can help you assert your rights. Feel free to share this information with employees who are no longer with the company; they can claim payment for these leave days by initiating labor court proceedings.
To advise you on your steps, you can send your requests to us before July 15 at the following address: syndicat.cgt@airbus.com.
CGT Airbus Commercial Aircraft