Meudon: the show manager who has accumulated 500 fixed-term contracts in twelve years has not been “kept precarious”

There administrative court of appeal of Versailles disowned a former show manager who demanded 29,000 euros from the town of Meudon (Hauts-de-Seine) for having “kept him precarious for several years” by making him sign 499 fixed-term contracts in the space of twelve years.

More than “600 unpaid overtime hours”

The applicant had in fact been hired between 2002 and 2014, under the mandate of former mayor (UDI) Hervé Marseille, as part of events organized by the municipal art and culture center. The fact remains that he then calculated that the town owed him nearly 23,000 euros in overtimepaid leave and salary catch-up: he therefore first appealed to the administrative court of Cergy-Pontoise to recover the sums, but also “6,000 euros” in damages for “unfair execution of the employment contract”.

He also wanted the town hall to be ordered to communicate to the courts its “hourly records” and “all of its pay slips”. Disavowed by the administrative court of Cergy-Pontoise on April 22, 2021, the manager appealed: he maintained that the hours mentioned in his employment contracts “do not correspond to reality” and that he had worked “645 hours of overtime” unpaid for the years 2010 to 2014 only.

Furthermore, “the schedules requested to establish the reality of these hours have never been produced by the municipality”, lamented its lawyer, Me Olivier Savignat, although she is nevertheless “the only one able to provide them”.

The “insufficiently detailed document produced”

But, “to support his allegations, he only produces a handwritten document drawn up by himwhich presents a count of hours worked without distinguishing between hours already paid and those for which [il] demands payment nor provide more information on the conditions for carrying out these overtime hours,” noted the Versailles judges.

If it is “constant” that he “did not systematically receive an individualized schedule”, the “only handwritten document” transmitted does not “allow” – given its “insufficiently detailed” nature – to “make it presume that the “existence of overtime”, judges the court in this judgment dated April 4, 2024, which has just been made public.

Contrary to what the applicant maintained, the “mere presence” of his hierarchical superior does not make it possible to “demonstrate that the applicant was also present at the same hours”, since his superior held “a permanent job”, adds -She.

“While the applicant provides no indication of the conditions under which the overtime hours in dispute were worked and the service obligations which allegedly motivated them, he does not provide sufficient evidence to make it presume that the hours actually occurred. additional payments for which he demands payment,” the judges believe.

The town of Meudon will also not be condemned for its “abusive” use of “precarious contracts”, as requested by its former manager: in reality it had “a permanent need” for his services and it had “refused to recruit him on one of the vacant positions of general manager and lighting manager created in 2013. So she had “an unfair attitude in the execution of the employment relationship” and “committed discrimination towards him”, which justified the payment of damages.

Recruited to “limited support” to permanent staff

However, each of his contracts “precisely detailed the duration of recruitment of MX, strictly limited to the duration and needs of the event, most often for a period of a few days”, underlines the administrative court of appeal of Versailles in his judgment. And if the municipality also employed “permanent managers”, this “single circumstance” is not likely to “establish that the missions entrusted” to the applicant “met a permanent need of the municipality”.

He had in fact been recruited “only to support, in a strictly limited manner in time and in its purpose, the permanent agents of the municipality on the occasion of events specifically identified and circumscribed in time”, insists- She. These events did not, moreover, present no “recurring character” over the year or from one year to the next.

The applicant was therefore indeed “engaged for a specific act” and cannot therefore claim that the municipality would have “illegally kept him precarious” by depriving him of permanent employment and by having “abusive” recourse to fixed-term contracts.

Finally, no “discrimination” can be blamed on the municipality of Meudon since the contract worker had simply “not applied” when new positions were created, in 2013, on the occasion of the opening of the second municipal theater.

/CB (PressPepper)

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