France: social partners strike national cross-industry agreement on telework

Talks over a cross-industry framework agreement on telework - or remote working - in France finally reached a conclusion on Thursday 26 November, after a process sped up by the lockdown and the forced transition to telework for a huge proportion of workers in the country. Social partners, with the exception of the CGT union, agreed on a text that is neither prescriptive nor normative but clarifies the legal framework and supplements a prior agreement from back in 2005. The unions that are signatories to the agreement, having criticised at the beginning of talks employers’ desire for a non-prescriptive agreement, finally came round with space given to social dialogue, the question of covering professional expenses, and the governing of recourse to telework in exceptional circumstances, as well as isolation and the right to disconnect.