Eating salads and sandwiches at your desk will no longer be illegal in France after it was agreed that tackling the coronavirus took precedence over workers’ lunch rights.
The government is about to issue a decree annulling a longstanding rule in the country’s 3,000-page Code du Travail that forbids employers, on pain of hefty fines, “to let employees take meals in premises used for work”.
The change, agreed between unions, employers and Élisabeth Borne, the labour minister, is aimed at reducing infection in company canteens or eating areas. These are mandatory in French workplaces and have become more crowded since restaurants and cafés shut in the autumn and employees resorted to takeaways from sandwich shops, which have multiplied in the cities over two decades.
