His lawyer tells us how the negotiation went. The company had no other alternative to separate from its employee.
If it’s not a record, it can’t be far from it. A dispute between an employee and her company recently ended in a contractual termination worth nearly a million euros, 950,000 euros to be precise. Anthony Coursaget, specialized in labor law, tells the story of this client, aged around fifty, to JDN. Back in 2025.
This employee works in Paris in a very large American IT company. “She is responsible for sales throughout Western Europe and is close enough to retirement to be afraid of not finding work afterwards,” confides the lawyer. Within this company, all sectors are managed by two people. A two-headed management that will not last, and the employee knows it. Fearing for her position, she becomes a protected employee by becoming a union representative.
In fact, the company reorganized itself in the United States by putting an end to the two-headed management to keep only one director per position. The fifty-year-old therefore expects this new organization to arrive on the other side of the Atlantic. At the same time, she is under pressure from her managers. One day, she breaks down and passes out. “This event, which occurred at the beginning of 2025, was recognized as a work accident. She was placed on sick leave several times because she was extremely stressed,” says Anthony Coursaget.
She is therefore considering leaving the company, which also wishes to separate from her to set up its new organization. At this precise moment, she has 6 years of seniority and has not been able to return to work following her repeated work stoppages. No disciplinary incidents took place. On the contrary, at work, everything has always gone well for the employee who has always met her objectives. We therefore have a protected employee who does not return to work against a company which wants to separate from her.
“A dismissal was impossible because the company was doing well financially and no fault had been committed. In fact, it was necessary to go through a conventional termination,” underlines Anthony Coursaget. When she walks through the door of her office, the employee confides in the lawyer about her daily life at work. Details that will greatly tip the scales in his favor.
“The manager who caused her work accident had already been reported and the company did nothing to correct the situation. We were therefore in a situation of moral harassment. Added to this is the fact that the fixed-day agreement was illegal because the employer did not carry out interviews to monitor the workload and the employee often worked very early in the morning and very late in the evening due to the time difference with the United States,” explains the lawyer.
Armed with all these elements, the employee and her lawyer begin to add up the amounts. “There were 2 and a half years of protected employee mandate remaining so we requested all of these salaries and payment of overtime for the last 3 years,” explains the legal professional. A proposal for a conventional termination of 1.1 million euros is made to the employer. The latter responds with a counter-proposal… 200,000 euros.
Faced with this situation, the employee puts pressure. “We said that she was going to stay in office until the end of her mandate as a protected employee (2 and a half years) and that she would then run again to stay in the company as much as possible. The company was blocked because it could not fire her,” concludes Anthony Coursaget. Trapped, the company finally agreed with the employee on the amount of €950,000. Enough to look to the future more calmly.
