A day rate agreement (forfait en jours), under which an employee works a set number of days per year rather than counted hours, requires an underlying collective agreement. This scheme is subject to high scrutiny and is often the subject of costly litigation for employers, particularly in relation to white collar employees.
Since 2011, the Court of Cassation has held that this agreement must guarantee compliance with maximum working times and rest periods by providing for effective, regular monitoring of workload, so that the employer can address any workload incompatible with reasonable hours in good time. A purely declaratory agreement is invalid, and the individual day rate arrangement then falls, reverting to the ordinary counting of hours.
In this case, a vehicle rental operator’s company-level agreement provided for an 11-hour daily rest, a 36-hour weekly rest, a limit of six working days a week, a monthly monitoring document kept in duplicate, monthly review by the line manager using that document, and an annual meeting on workload.
The Court of Cassation held that the agreement was valid and, importantly, that it need not spell out the concrete methods of that monitoring or the corrective measures to be taken : those fall within the employer’s management powers.
Two caveats remain. A scheme that would limit the guarantees to self-reporting and an annual meeting with no alert or correction, would remain at risk. And the validity of the agreement does not guarantee the regularity of its application : a failure to actually hold the annual meetings or carry out the monthly monitoring may deprive the individual agreement of effect, which is distinct from nullity.
Cass. soc., 6 May 2026, no. 24-10.699
