Do teleworking employees have the right to their meal vouchers?
This is the question that the Nanterre court had to answer on March 10, when the management of the company Malakoff Humanis had decided to withdraw this privilege from employees who work from their home.
No text of law specifically frames this question, and the judges rendered an unprecedented decision for this specific case, considering that nothing obliged this company to grant meal vouchers to their employees who can have lunch at home.
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In the case of Malakoff Humanis, some of the employees were placed on telework at the start of the health crisis, and another continued to work on the site.
The former saw their meal vouchers withdrawn, while the latter kept them.
Article 4 of the national inter-professional agreement relating to teleworking of July 19, 2005 nevertheless specifies that “
teleworkers benefit from the same legal and contractual rights and advantages as those applicable to employees in a comparable situation working on the premises of the company.
But it is this notion of "
comparable situation
" between employees in the office and their colleagues working from home that motivated the judges' decision.
No legal obligation
"
The meal voucher is an advantage granted by the employer which does not result from any legal obligation
", first recalled the court of Nanterre.
The judges added that it was "not contestable" that teleworkers benefit from meal vouchers, but only if their working conditions were equivalent to those working on site without a company restaurant.
However, the objective of the meal voucher is precisely to "
enable its employees to face the additional cost of catering outside their home
", explains the Nanterre court, which ruled that in the absence of this additional cost, the company did not have to distribute meal vouchers to its employees.
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This decision is not in line with the government's recommendations to telework as much as possible during the health crisis, as noted by labor lawyer Eric Rocheblave.
"
The Nanterre court went
against the positions of Urssaf and the Ministry of Labor
, which both consider that teleworkers should benefit from these meal vouchers in the same way as employees in the office
," explains the lawyer.
Two state institutions are therefore against this decision of Nanterre, we can see the position of the government which wants to encourage teleworking as much as possible, it is very related to the context. "
Current case law
Can any business now deprive its teleworkers of meal vouchers?
It's possible.
"
The Nîmes Court of Appeal had already ruled in 2012 that a company was not obliged to distribute meal vouchers to its employees who live less than 10 minutes from their company
", continues Eric Rocheblave.
And Kevin Bouleau, lawyer in labor law in Paris, to add that the Court of Appeal of Riom had also ruled in 2018 that employees in telework or in the office were not "
in a comparable situation
".
Companies could therefore rely on this "
current of jurisprudence
" to withdraw their meal vouchers from teleworkers, believes Eric Rocheblave.
Read also: Craftsmen, traders and restaurateurs ask to cap the commissions of meal vouchers
Other questions are very likely to invite themselves to this debate: "
What position will companies adopt regarding employees outside their home, for example in a coworking space?"
», Notes with mischief Kevin Bouleau.
For the moment, this question is not settled.
