Telework agreement signed at France Télécom Orange

Towards the end of June 2009, the France Télécom Orange group signed an agreement on telework with four trade unions. Under the agreement, employees will be able to become teleworkers on a voluntary basis while maintaining their direct links with the company. The signatory parties expressed their overall satisfaction with the agreement. However, two large trade unions did not sign the accord and criticised its provisions.

Signatory parties

On 22 June 2009, four trade union confederations signed a group-level agreement on telework at the national telecommunications provider France Télécom Orange. The trade union confederations concerned comprised the:

• French Democratic Confederation of Labour (Confédération française démocratique du travail, CFDT);

• French Confederation of Professional and Managerial Staff – General Confederation of Professional and Managerial Staff (Confédération française de l’encadrement – Confédération générale des cadres, CFE-CGC);

• French Christian Workers’ Confederation (Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens, CFTC);

• General Confederation of Labour – Force ouvrière (Confédération générale du travail – Force ouvrière, CGT-FO).

However, the two largest trade unions in the telecoms group refused to sign the agreement, namely the General Confederation of Labour (Confédération générale du travail, CGT) and the independent Solidarity, Unity, Democracy (Solidaire, Unitaire, Démocratique, SUD), which obtained 26% and 22.3%, respectively, of the votes in the last workplace elections in January 2009. Nevertheless, the telework agreement will apply, because the four trade unions that signed it obtained an overall majority of the votes in those elections (FR0808039I).

Agreement objectives

The agreement undertakes to improve measures concerning telework that were set out in the telecommunications sector-level agreement signed on 6 October 2006 and in the national intersectoral agreement (accord national interprofessionnel, ANI) signed on 19 July 2005 (FR0510104F, FR0506102N). These accords followed on from the European social partner framework agreement on telework in 2002 (EU0207204F).

Bargaining on telework was envisaged in a draft agreement of 25 March 2008 on forward-looking employment and skills management (Gestion prévisionnelle des emplois et des compétences, GPEC). Negotiations began in May 2008.

Content of collective agreement

This agreement on telework covers the three-year period from June 2009 to June 2012 and concerns some 100,000 employees of French companies in the France Télécom Orange group. It defines telework as ‘a form of organisation and/or carrying out work, using new information and communication technologies in which work that could be done on the employer’s premises is carried out elsewhere on a regular basis’.

Forms of telework

The agreement covers three types of telework for positions and activities that are compatible with this kind of independent work:

• alternating telework at home where employees work both at home and on the company’s premises;

• telework in a satellite office where employees work on a regular basis near their home in company premises that are not their usual workplace;

• occasional teleworking, where employees work exceptionally at home in order to deal with unusual or emergency situations arising from a task that should have been dealt with on the company’s premises.

General principles

The agreement lays down several general principles, such as:

• the voluntary basis of telework – any employee wishing to opt for telework must ask their line manager, who can accept or refuse the request provided reasons are given for the decision. This would depend on the compatibility of the request with the good functioning of the department and work organisation. Furthermore, ‘the company will provide the necessary technical solutions so that each employee benefits from the resources needed in order to carry out telework’;

• reversibility – any employee and line manager will be able to decide to stop the telework arrangement, after giving two months’ notice. In that case, the employee concerned will return to working on the company’s premises;

• an alternating strategy and preventing isolation – telework should not prevent employees from physically participating in meetings with other staff. Teleworkers should also be ‘present in their work teams at least two days a week, thus ensuring that they meet their colleagues and managers’, who will periodically meet the teleworkers for whom they are responsible.

Contractual provisions

Each situation of telework must be covered by a fixed-term rider to the employment contract of the employee concerned and by a fixed-term protocol for those with civil service status. In order to respect teleworkers’ private life, the provisions cover the following aspects:

• rules regarding how telework should take place – this includes the length of the period of adaptation, the distribution of days worked in the company and at home, and the hours during which employees can be contacted;

• the work station – the company installs, repairs and adapts equipment, respecting safety and ergonomic conditions. Teleworkers can ask for an inspection by the Workplace health and safety committee (Comité d’hygiène, de sécurité et des conditions de travail, CHSCT);

• line of communication – teleworkers should immediately inform their direct manager about any breakdown or malfunctioning in order for a solution to be found;

• the provision of equipment – the company provides each remote worker with a laptop;

• the conditions regarding the reversibility of telework – a national monitoring commission, comprising two representatives appointed by each trade union that signed the agreement as well as representatives of company management, is responsible for monitoring the implementation of the agreement and for drawing up an annual overall assessment;

• training for telework – teleworkers benefit from appropriate training for this kind of work organisation and also for the equipment that is provided.

In addition to providing equipment, such as laptop computers, the company ensures that remote access to work applications and telephone lines are available; it also pays for extra insurance in order to protect equipment in teleworkers’ homes. Furthermore, the company awards a one-off sum of €150 – which is both taxable and subject to social contributions – in order to cover any other expenses that employees may have.

Teleworkers have the same legal rights and advantages, as well as those laid down in collective agreements, as employees in comparable situations working on the company’s premises. They also have the same social security cover in case of accidents, sickness, death or providence.

Reactions of social partners

Employer

According to France Télécom’s Director of Industrial Relations, Laurent Zylberberg, the group ‘already practices telework without knowing it’, as about 1,000 employees in the group are currently teleworkers. The agreement should ‘make it possible to go further than simply managing these practices but also to make progress in thinking on this issue’. ‘The idea is not that France Télécom will one day become a company where everyone will be a teleworker’, but ‘to ensure that telework develops’. In the opinion of Mr Zylberberg, the development of telework will involve training, because it ‘will have repercussions on managers’ work’. In addition, it implies ‘maintaining links with employees, in order to avoid isolation’, which is why ‘teleworkers will spend at least two days a week on their company’s premises’.

Signatory trade unions

Regarding the trade union confederations that signed the agreement, CGT-FO welcomes it because, on the one hand, it will make it possible to ‘render working at home normal, as well as impose limits and protect it, especially with occasional telework’. On the other hand, the agreement constitutes ‘an additional tool which will be used in the context of restructuring and other forms of reorganisation’.

CFE-CGC is satisfied that the accord ‘introduces protective measures that have been collectively agreed for employees who request to become teleworkers and who negotiate special individual conditions related to this new type of work’.

Furthermore, CFTC identifies, as part of the progress made, the ‘possibility of local experiments for those who do not come within the national agreement’, namely ‘for occupations for which it is difficult to measure their compatibility with this kind of work’.

For its part, CFDT also asks for test cases to be carried out in all occupations, because the trade union criticises the fact that ‘as soon as it involves taking practical steps, the text lacks political will’. Thus, ‘call centres are excluded’, because ‘telework is only compatible with activities that can be carried out independently and without the regular presence of support and managers’.

Other trade unions

CGT, which did not sign the agreement, considers that this minimum agreement ‘excludes the majority of employees and contains sections that are astonishing and have serious consequences’. In the opinion of the trade union confederation, ‘legitimate expectations of staff regarding the means and conditions for using telework remain essentially either unanswered or without any real guarantees’.

SUD, which did not sign the accord either, points out that it is ‘essentially designed to regularise what already exists and does not make it possible to tackle concerns regarding imposed mobility, longer working days and distances covered’.

Commentary

Bargaining on telework in the France Télécom Orange group took more than a year. Many different factors can explain this relatively long period. In addition to the general economic situation and the workplace elections at the beginning of 2009, reorganisation and restructuring within the France Télécom Orange group did not contribute to a willingness to sign a collective agreement quickly. Moreover, the trade unions were expecting the agreement to be more innovative for a leading group in the telecommunications sector.

A few days previously – on 9 June 2009 – the French Parliament (Assemblée Nationale) had adopted, during its first reading, a draft law on telework (in French). The draft text received 305 votes in favour compared with 146 votes against the proposal. The law was supported by the Secretary of State responsible for Forward Planning and Development of the Digital Economy (Prospective et Développement de l’Économie numérique), Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet. This proposal sets out a legal framework for telework by extending the principle of working at home to all employees by means of the ANI on telework that was signed in 2005. The senate is to examine this text in the autumn of 2009 before its expected adoption by the end of the year.

Benoît Robin, Institute for Economic and Social Research (IRES)