In a decision dated May 11, 2022 (n°21-15250), the French Supreme Court again held very clearly that one same individual redeployment opportunity may end up being offered to several employees impacted by a reduction-in-workforce.
The Court heeded the employer’s argument, i.e., although the employer is bound to grant the employee impacted by a redundancy project a priority on the positions available over external candidates or non-impacted employees, they cannot guarantee a position to the impacted employee if this means disregarding the potential application of other impacted employees. One same internal redeployment opportunity may thus be offered to several employees impacted by a reduction-in-workforce.
This case law principle is now captured in Article D.1233-2-1 of the French Labour Code, which provides that the internal redeployment opportunities available may be sent as a list to all impacted employees, provided the said list clearly sets the criteria that will be used to select the successful candidate in case several employees apply.