In principle, an employee working on a fixed-term contract must have an end date for their employment specified in their contract.
However, in an exhaustive list of cases, the employment contract of an employee on a fixed-term contract may not include a specific end date. One such case is the replacement of an absent employee.
In this case, the contract expires at the end of the replaced person’s absence. It must therefore continue:
- until the replaced employee actually returns to work or, at the latest, until the day after their return,
- or, where applicable, until the termination of the replaced employee’s employment contract. The termination of the replaced employee’s contract results in the termination of the fixed-term replacement contract, as it is no longer needed.
To prevent them from working beyond the end of the contract, the employer must inform the replacement employee of this term.
In this case, the employer had not notified the employee (whose employment contract had been suspended due to an accident at work) for more than two years that the employee he was replacing had ceased working. Nor had the employer provided him with end-of-contract documents during this period.
The Court of Cassation concluded that the employer had kept the employee bound by an employment contract that had continued after the fixed-term contract had ended; this relationship was therefore considered to be a permanent employment contract.
