An employee was dismissed for serious misconduct for inappropriate clothing while cleaning. The legal dispute concluded before the Court of Appeal.
These three employees will not forget this morning of April 28, 2022. Employees of an anonymous company located in the Burgundy region, they arrive at work at 5:15 a.m. to relieve the night shift. They go into the locker room to change and surprise. They discover the cleaning lady kneeling, in a thong and a t-shirt, scrubbing the showers. The discomfort is immediate and they warn their superiors. You will agree that it is unusual to wash showers in this outfit.
“She explained that she was working with bleach and that she did not want to get a stain on her pants. She refutes all potential malicious intentions,” comments Anthony Coursaget, labor law lawyer at the Paris Bar. The company in which the events took place informs the cleaning lady’s employer by email. The disciplinary sanction did not take long: she was suspended as a precautionary measure on May 2, 2022. She was also summoned to an interview prior to dismissal.
The employee disputes the facts but the damage is done. On June 2, 2022, she was dismissed for serious misconduct, without notice or dismissal pay. His dismissal letter accuses him of “totally inappropriate and unacceptable” clothing which led to an “embarrassing, inappropriate and scabrous” situation. The cleaning lady then appealed to the industrial tribunal to obtain reclassification as dismissal without real and serious cause.
She considers that this dismissal is an unfair execution of the employment contract and is therefore claiming damages to compensate for the harm suffered. The industrial tribunal rejects his requests. “There was a work uniform so she had something to protect herself. She had already been seen several times with bleach stains. Regardless of her seniority or her situation, this outfit was not justified so the dismissal is justified,” underlines Anthony Coursaget. The employee appealed after this first setback.
She multiplies the arguments to defend herself. She claims, for example, that the company where she cleaned should have put up signs to warn that she was cleaning. She also tries to highlight her employer’s shortcomings in terms of clothing, even going so far as to contradict herself. She claims to have worked in a blue coat, before asserting that the employer ultimately did not provide her with one.
The outcome therefore takes place on February 26, 2026 before the Dijon Court of Appeal. Here again, the dismissal of the cleaning lady is confirmed but with an important distinction. The judges reclassified his ouster as dismissal for real and serious cause. This classification validates the existence of a fault but takes into account the fact that it is isolated without any antecedent. And this requalification has consequences.
Where dismissal for serious misconduct deprives the employee of their compensation, dismissal for real and serious cause allows them to receive compensation. In this case, the cleaning lady had not touched anything. Following the judgment of the Court of Appeal, his employer is ordered to pay him severance pay, notice pay and back pay on the temporary layoff. In total, this represents 4782.17 euros. A consolation prize for the employee who at the same time saw her requests for damages rejected by the judges.
