 Poster: A snowHead
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BREAKING NEWS: A French court hit Ryanair with a €200,000 fine on Wednesday for breaches of French labour laws, and ordered the Irish airline to pay €10 million in damages, but ruled against confiscating four aircraft, despite the demands of prosecutors.
Irish airline Ryanair was ordered to pay nearly €10 million ($13.5 million) in damages after being found guilty of breaching French labour law.
A court in southern France, which also fined the company €200,000, awarded the damages after ruling that Ryanair had illegally registered staff based at Marseille airport in Ireland in order to save money on payroll and other taxes.
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Ryanair have countered that, “Ryanair crews were correctly working under Irish contracts of employment and paying Irish social insurance in accordance with the applicable European employment and social security laws,” which as with chalet companies sending staff on 'secondment' for five months is no doubt legally true. What's interesting is can we assume that the court didn't care about the fine print and looked to the reality of the situation?
http://m.thelocal.fr//20131002/ryanair-set-to-lose-labour-case-in-french-court
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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It will be appealed, and if they have legal contracts in Ireland, thats the end of it.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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interesting to see if it effect anyone else....I suspect not though. I cant see them being interested in cafe's and bars etc....
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Only 8,000,000 on Reuters.
Ryanair had already said in a statement issued on Tuesday that it had expected a negative ruling and would appeal it.
"We will appeal... on the basis that European employment and social security law clearly allows mobile workers on Irish- registered aircraft, working for an Irish airline, to pay their taxes and social taxes in Ireland," the statement read.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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See my first post re it being legal. Didn't seem to hinder the court in this instance.
The employment situation in France is quite tense at the moment, the big unions are chasing anyone they perceive to be in breach of regulations - just this week the courts have also banned shops in Paris from staying open after 9pm and banned DIY Shops from opening on Sundays.
Yes, alpine ventures are a far way off, but where there are enough business owners and, more importantly, unemployed people moaning about unfair competition, it's not beyond the imagination to see them looking at bigger British businesses such as hotels.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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just this week the courts have also banned shops in Paris from staying open after 9pm and banned DIY Shops from opening on Sundays.
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Wow. I'm sure that will really help their economy.
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The current govt. in France seems determined to wipe out business and inward investment, French or foreign owned. The Ryanair ruling was to be expected. Very interesting to see how this plays out on appeal and up to the European Court. The French govt (and the courts) are certainly ready to ignore EU directives when it suits them.
Apparently it's possible under an EU Directive to opt-out of contributing to the French social security system even as a French resident by contracting with another European provider / company but the French courts are choosing to ignore this and the likes of the URSSAF (who collect "cotisations" (equivalent to NI contributions) continue to take people through the courts.
I wouldn't be surprised to see more "testing" of the "secondment" of seasonal staff to France this season. Leaving aside the "ski hosting" issue with Le Ski, they were also fined, I understand, for French employment law breaches.
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Quite right about Le Ski, Mark, the bulk of the fine against them was for not observing minimum wages legislation; ski hosting was almost an after-thought.
Hollande is thoroughly detested by the majority of French people, even the traditional left-wing voting block are upset by his programme of simply undoing everything the previous administration brought in. His approval ratings are the lowest ever recorded.
Interestingly, various Ministers have said allowing Sunday or night-time trading is simply not open to negotiation, but in these hard times the employees losing out on generous overtime are making a lot of noise. This weekend many of the DIY shops defied the courts and opened anyway - that could be very expensive in the long-run but got lots of positive news coverage this week.
Oh, and today the supermarket chain Monoprix has also been banned from opening its Paris stores after 9pm.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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When hollande proposed that all employees should get equel share of profits from the company they work for the air turned blue in the office of my french friends ...most emplyoers do not like their own government at the moment...the labour laws are not popular either..probably one reason why boots walked away and sold the business their for one euro.
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You should have heard P-Y Gerbeau slagging Hollande off on the radio today.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| albinomountainbadger wrote: |
What's interesting is can we assume that the court didn't care about the fine print and looked to the reality of the situation?
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No, we can assume the court is French. They pay no regard to the requirements of the EU when it affects them in what they perceive as a negative way.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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I'm not surprised Ryanair (and most chalet ops) don't want to pay social charges here as it adds up to around 45% of your net profit. No there's an incentive to either do some "fiscal optimisation" and do whatever you can to avoid being strangled to death by the state leviathan.
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And yesterday they set about Amazon to protect small independent bookshops
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You know it makes sense.
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| chocksaway wrote: |
| And yesterday they set about Amazon to protect small independent bookshops |
Hollande has been bleating on about that since his election; I suspect most bookshop owners would prefer a reduction in social charges...
Seems his plan is to ban free delivery on books. I'm not really sure what Amazon have been fiddling to make themselves so cheap (selling anything at a loss in France is already illegal, and a minimum retail price has existed on books for decades) but whatever it is I don't see this stopping them for long.
In general the French just can't accept that an inefficient business should face the facts and wind down (see farming, steel furnaces, tyre factories, ad nauseum...). If I try to argue with my girlfriend that it's not in the interests of the business owner to keep operating at a loss, she loses any sense of debate and just starts ranting about all the people who will lose their jobs. Seems the owner should be forced to keep it going. I guess it's something they learn in school.
Thinking of tyre factories, I still love this story from earlier this year:
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| The head of US tyre manufacturer Titan International told the French government Wednesday that his firm will not take over a loss-making Goodyear factory because the unions there are “crazy” and its employees “only work three hours a day”. |
http://www.france24.com/en/20130220-goodyear-france-titan-taylor-montebourg-usa-unemployment-tyres-factory-unions
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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I would say we need to get rid of M Hollande pronto, but I'm not sure what we'd replace him with.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Well Sarko seems to teeter between conviction for Bettencourt and political come-back. Though given Hollande was only elected because he isn't Sarko, I'm not convinced he's the hero we need either.
Valls is clearly posturing for a populist position in the UMP with all this Rom stuff, perhaps he's testing the water.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| chocksaway wrote: |
| And yesterday they set about Amazon to protect small independent bookshops |
It will probably sound futile in time like Luddites action fighting against the inevitable.
It would however be reasonable to force Amazon to pay some tax locally.
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