Work/Life: international employment news update

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Issue 83

Welcome to the latest edition of our international employment news update.

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Parental and social rights reinforced in France

As a result of two laws passed in July 2023, the social rights of employees who are parents have been strengthened: parents of children suffering from an illness, disability or serious accident, and women who have suffered miscarriage.

These employees benefit from protection against dismissal during parental leave and for a 10-week period following miscarriage (unless for gross misconduct or impossibility to maintain employment for a reason unrelated to the child’s state of health/miscarriage).

In addition, caregiving employees (parents of sick children) benefit from guaranteed remote working, and the duration of special leaves is increased (from 7 to 14 days in the event of the death of a child, from 2 to 5 days further to the announcement of a child disability, cancer or chronic pathology). Finally, employees who have suffered a miscarriage need no longer wait 3 days before receiving social security allowances.

The Labour Party plans overhaul of UK employment law

The Labour Party has announced plans for a reform of UK employment law ahead of next year's general election. The party's deputy leader Angela Rayner announced a "cast iron commitment" to introducing an Employment Rights Bill should Labour win office in the election due in 2024. The party's ambitions include a New Deal for Working People to modernise partnerships between employers, unions and the government. It also plans to strengthen practices around equal pay and ethnicity and disability, for example via mandatory publication of ethnicity and disciplinary pay gaps for employers with 250+ staff.

Fully remote work trumps hybrid set-ups in the race to cut emissions

US employees undertaking full-time remote work cut their emissions by over 50%, a study has found. Residential workers curb their emissions by a notable 54%, head and shoulders above their hybrid working counterparts: one day at home per working week was found to cull emissions by 2%, and two to four days out of office averaged out at a 29% reduction.

AI will come for home workers’ jobs first , some say

While it may be an eco-friendly choice, at-home working could be the first professional realm to be supplanted by AI. A study from two Oxford professors reveals that remote workers’ livelihoods are most at risk from advancing technology, as watercooler interactions and in-person rapport “cannot be readily substituted”.

Dutch wage inflation is stalling

It appears that a year-and-a-half-long trend of increasingly rapid rising wages has come to an end, reports the employers' association AWVN. According to the leading advisor on working conditions for Dutch companies, agreed wage increases in new collective agreements in August were slightly higher than in July, but still significantly lower than in previous months. A total of seven new collective agreements were concluded in August, with wages increasing by an average of 7.4%. This is still historically very high and also 0.1% points higher than in July. A few months ago, however, the average wage increase was 8.2%. At that time, wages were rising even faster than inflation.

Suite of Goldman Sachs executives fired in communications policy breach

Senior executives in Goldman Sachs' transaction banking arm in New York have been let go for breaching the firm's communications policy, which confines correspondence to approved communications channels. This kind of communications policy violation is not anomalous; regulators in the US have fined multiple Wall Street firms a total of over $2 billion for shortcomings when monitoring employees' use of informal communication channels, such as messaging app WhatsApp, for official business.

Ban on German works council chairperson deemed unlawful

In summary proceedings (decision of 28 August 2023), the works council of a catering company and its chairperson defended themselves against a ban on access to the premises imposed by the employer on the chairperson for alleged forgery of documents. The ban was an inadmissible hindrance to the works council's work, the Higher Labour Court of Hesse ruled. The court stated that if an employer wants to prevent the works council chairperson from continuing to act in the case of very serious breaches of duty, he or she must file an application with the labour court for a temporary ban on the exercise of their office.

Société Générale is spending €100 million to eliminate its gender pay gap

French bank Société Générale has announced a two-year plan to eliminate its gender pay gap. A designated €100 million ($107 million) fund will be drawn on to compensate female employees undertaking the same or similar roles to their male counterparts where there is no reasonable explanation for the gulf in remuneration. The publicly announced nine-figure budget was supplemented by new targets, including aiming for 35% of senior leadership roles to be held by women by 2026.