Actance

The firm: Actance specialises in employment law through the advisory services and the legal assistance that it provides to companies.

Actance partners with large corporations and groups with both a domestic and international footprint, including many listed companies. The firm also helps mid-size companies that wish to expand by adopting a genuine social policy and managing labour-management relations better. The sectors of activity it is involved in include banking, insurance, industry, pharmaceuticals, automotive, chemicals, advertising and the media.

Actance has a strong track record in handling and managing litigation, in particular high-risk disputes and criminal labour law.

Its success in carrying out assignments is due to its intimacy with clients and to its responsiveness and flexibility in managing and monitoring the cases they entrust it with, and to its knowledge of the ways they are organised and operate.

The firm's mode of organisation and its size enable it, whatever the scope and complexities of the issues it is asked to address, to meet the requests for availability and responsiveness necessary to resolve them successfully. Ongoing assistance contracts between Actance and many of its clients are a way of fulfilling clients’ demand for a more integrated approach and long-term relationships.

Areas of practice
Employment: collective labour relations: industry-wide, group or company-wide collective bargaining; management of relations with staff representatives and trade unions; corporate reorganisation and restructurings; management of industrial disputes; job forecast management; collective bargaining on the employment of seniors, gender equality; personal data protection, codes of ethics, corporate IT guidelines; compensation policy and employees’ saving schemes; employee shareholding policy and stock options; number of hours worked and organisation of working time; acquisition or compliance audits; and occupational training. Health at work: negotiation on the prevention of psychosocial risks, hardship; management of relations with the health and safety committee and its experts; and individual procedures leading to recognition of employees’ incapacity for work. Individual labour relations: drafting of contracts of employment and their specific clauses (non-compete covenants, staff mobility, penalty clause for training); amendment to contracts of employment; prevention of risks of discrimination and inequitable treatment; secondment and expatriation; dismissal procedures for personal reasons; and situation of company officers.

Social security and complementary social protection legislation: accruals audits; relations between companies and supervisory authorities; pension systems; and retirement schemes, in particular supplementary schemes.

Litigation: assistance and representation before civil, criminal and administrative courts; individual labour disputes (before labour courts); professional election-related disputes or regarding appointment of trade union representatives (before lower courts); collective litigation (before the administrative court and the court of first instance); social security claims (before the social security court); and criminal liability of legal entities or their officers (before the police court or criminal court). It also appeals cases before employment divisions of Courts of Appeal.

Criminal labour: liability of company officers and delegations of authority; compliance audits; and criminal sanctions for hampering the functioning of staff representatives.