New trade union strategies for new forms of employment

Abstract

This paper records the responses to the questionnaire that was circulated to academics for the purposes of compiling the ETUC publication, ‘New trade union strategies for new forms of employment’. In responding to the questions asked, this paper provides a broad description of how work relationships are organised in French law. It includes an analysis of the French concept of employee. It explains how behind the formal central criterion of this concept – subordination - lies a diversity of factors, supposedly proof elements of subordination. The impact of one of them, worker’s economic dependence, explains how French case law has managed to create a wide concept of employee, and hence a wide application range for Labour Law, including most of platform workers and other new forms of employment. This paper also recalls special French statutes extending the French Labour code to dependant workers like home workers, sales representatives, branch managers (including certain types of franchises), etc. The paper finally explains how and why both subordination and dependency should be officially recognised as alternative or combined criteria to draw the scope of labour protection.