Paris: dismissed employees of the French Football Federation lose their last match in court

Final whistle. THE Board of state definitively validated the job saving plan (PSE) of the French Football Federation (FFF) decided in July 2021, and which consisted of eliminating 22 positions within this institution located on Boulevard de Grenelle, in Paris (15th).

Nine employees take to the front

As a reminder, the FFF had justified this social plan at the time with a “economic motive” ; a majority collective agreement setting the PSE was therefore signed on July 13, 2021 between the general director of the Federation, Florence Hardouin, and the union delegate representing the National Union of Football Administrators and Assimilates-CFDT.

This agreement had been “validated” by the regional and interdepartmental directorate of the economy, employment, work and solidarity (Drieets) of Île-de-France on July 16, 2021, but nine employees of the FFF had appealed to the Paris administrative court to have this decision annulled.

Initially, they had won their case, since the decision had been canceled on December 10, 2021, which opened the possibility for the interested parties to go to the industrial tribunal to contest their dismissals “without real and serious cause” and thus obtain better compensation. But the FFF appealed and this time the Paris administrative court of appeal ruled in its favor. The nine employees therefore brought the case before the highest court of the French administrative order.

A PSE at 2.8 million euros

In a judgment dated April 3, 2024, which has just been made public, the Council of State begins by recalling generally that “the signing, on behalf of the employer, of an agreement (…) by a principal beyond the power given to him, may be subject to retroactive regularization.

In this case, in this case, “if only the executive committee of the FFF was authorized (…) to authorize commitments with a contractual value exceeding 300,000 euros, this same executive committee, by a deliberation of January 27, 2022, expressly ratified the PSE, the cost of which was estimated at 2.8 million euros by the report of the expert mandated by the social and economic committee [CSE] », underline the judges.

During the proceedings, the executive committee of the FFF had therefore “ratified this agreement”: Florence Hardouin should therefore be “regarded retroactively as having had the capacity to sign this agreement”, as the administrative court of appeal had already ruled of Paris, without committing “an error of law”.

The court ruled “without committing an error of law”

The dismissed employees also maintained that the CSE had not had “communication of useful elements regarding the real economic reason for the reorganization”. They therefore asked the judges to sanction the “irregularity” of the CSE’s information and consultation procedure.

But the court ruled “without committing an error of law”, that “the circumstance (…) according to which letters addressed to employees after the approval of the PSE (…) had mentioned another economic reason (the “protection of competitiveness”), that the one appearing in the documents transmitted (…) relating to the economic and financial difficulties of the FFF, was not such as to establish that the procedure had been (…) tainted by irregularity”, confirms the state Council. Ultimately, the applicants were therefore disavowed.

/CB (PressPepper)

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