- A maintenance worker was fired after a Twitter photo.
- The case, tried on Tuesday at the Labor Court, was reserved for June 19.
- In some cases, photos taken in a private setting can also work against employees.
The photo, taken in September 2018, had not been particularly viral, just over a hundred shares when it was published on the social network Twitter. However, it cost his CDI, signed seven years ago, to his only appearing Adama Cisse. This cleaning agent, dressed in the traditional green and yellow outfit, appears asleep, barefoot, leaning against the edge of a window. A month later, the employee was dismissed for "serious misconduct", his employer Derichebourg arguing in particular that his attitude had damaged the image of the company and that of their client, the town hall of Paris. The former employee, he says that the picture was taken on his break time.
Is a simple cliche, stolen in addition, sufficient to justify a dismissal? The question will be decided on June 19 by the Labor Court of Créteil but raises the question of the protection of employees. "Today, we have judges on every street corner with their smartphones," deplored Tuesday at the hearing, Joachim Schavello, the lawyer for the defendant. In his eyes, the dismissal of Adama Cisse is nothing less than the fear of a "bad buzz". The mayor of Paris who warned his provider of the existence of this cliché did not complain "of a bad performance, but of a bad image", he continues. The company says that the employee did not follow the internal regulations and had already been the subject of a warning for non-compliance with safety rules and a notification of unjustified absence.
"Social networks amplify this risk"
“That a photo taken without the knowledge of an employee could harm him, this is nothing new. It was even the subject of a film! "Smiles Yves Nicol, lawyer specializing in labor law. Papparazzi , released in 1998, recounted the troubles of Patrick Timsit, photographed at a football match instead of being at work. Licensed, he set out to find the author of the photo. "The novelty is that social networks amplify this risk, not only that such a snapshot is taken but also that it is the cause of a runaway," continues the council. Still, if a photo can be a piece of evidence, you have to be able to specify the context: "You can't know, when you see a photo, precisely when it was taken. In this photo we do not know, for example, how long the break lasted. However, doubt always benefits the employee, "recalls Julien Boutiron, author of Labor Law for Dummies .
Recently, the question also arose for photos taken in a private setting. In early January, two employees of Le Slip Français were laid off after being photographed taking part in a party called "Viva Africa", one wearing a black face - the face grimé in black - the other wearing a monkey costume. The photos, although taken in a private setting, unrelated to the company, quickly went viral and were accompanied by the hashtag # BoycottLeSlipFrançais. "The procedure is still ongoing," says Le Slip Français.
Damage to the company's image
Theoretically, however, labor law protects individual freedoms, what he does outside his working hours cannot be held against himself if he does so publicly. In 2017, the Court of Cassation even ruled that there was no real and serious cause for the dismissal of an employee working in an association responsible for welcoming disabled people, suspected of having committed violence against his wife and their child. The employer had however learned of the affair through the press.
But the company - and this is what the French Brief is based on - can argue that private behavior can create a disturbance in the operation of the company or an attack on its image. This was, for example, the case when Dior dismissed designer John Galliano in 2011 during anti-Semitic insults in a Parisian cafe. The scene had been filmed and published on social networks. In this case, the employee is not dismissed for professional misconduct, it is a classic individual dismissal, with compensation and notice.
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