Employee terminated while being very far away from home

Question

This recent question addresses the case of a trucker whose employment is terminated while he is driving the truck, and the question focuses on what happens with the truck.

This question is about what happens with the (now) former employee.

It can happen that the terminated employee (the trucker in this example) is in a location with very poor or nonexistent public transport, making the trip back home very expensive and time-consuming. Is the company responsible for organizing the travel back home, and compensating the terminated employee for any extra costs and time? If the company does not do it, can the ex-employee successfully sue for both travel expenses and time wasted? If the location is very far from home, without easy access to public transportation, it can not only be expensive and time-consuming to get home, but even dangerous. For example, what if the ex-employee does not have enough money for travel and accommodation (assuming the need to eat and sleep if the travel takes multiple days)? Can additional damages be calculated for this?

In jurisdictions where employment can simply be terminated immediately and over the phone, this is more likely to come up than in countries where this is not the case, but comments on the previous question constructed scenarios where this can happen even in countries without at-will employment (One part of the organization posts a written letter starting the notice period, whilst another part ignorant or uninterested in the notice period, insists to keep driving, and the notice period ends while still being underway).

Answer 1

france

Applicability given notice periods

Except in the most extreme cases of firing for cause, one cannot be fired without a notice period, and firing requires certain procedures (not "a phone call").

Nonetheless, the employer can suspend the employee without pay for a time, then fire them for cause. The employer will have to pay for the notice period (i.e. "garden leave") but it is plausible that the employee never sets foot in the office after the first HR call.

The employee is compensated for their time

Generally, time spent going to and coming back from one’s "usual place of employment" is not counted as work time (article L3121-4 of the labor code). However, time spent going elsewhere for professional purposes, if it exceeds the usual commute time, must be counted as work time.

Up until fairly recently there was a question of what is the "usual place of employment" for professions such as sales, maintenance etc. that spend most of their work time travelling around client sites. A couple of jurisprudence decisions based on EU law clarified it to mean that in that case, the time spent going to the first client location or coming back from the last client location is counted as work time; see among others Cour de cassation, 23 novembre 2022, 20-21.924 (salesman is owed overtime pay for time spent travelling).

The employee in the hypothetical is close enough to that real case that I am confident they are owed compensation for the time spent travelling back home. Assuming the employee does not take undue detours, that would include any time actually spent, even if that time is greatly increased by the unavailability of the usual mode of transportation (i.e. the company’s truck).

Expenses are less clear, but probably yes

Say the trucker has to call a cab to go home. Does the company have to pay the tab?

There is no specific labor code statute on that point. However, a basic theory of extracontractual obligation (i.e. based on article 1240) seems to hold water.

The employee clearly suffered a damage (having to pay for a cab), compared to the counterfactual scenario where they go back home using the company’s truck (or whichever mode of transportation they usually use). There is no question that this damage was caused by the company’s decision to fire/suspend them.

The only question is whether the company’s conduct was faulty, which in turn relies mostly on whether they had implicitly promised that the trucker would be provided a way home. I find it likely that they did, given the past history of successful delivery when the trucker was, in fact, provided a way home; possibly the contract has something as well. However, the exact history and fact pattern may matter.