Silent employer on dismissal grounds: 1-year challenge runs from notification

A private-sector employer who dismisses an employee on personal grounds (motif personnel) must base the dismissal on a cause réelle et sérieuse.Service Public That standard is met only where the employer's stated grounds rest on real facts, are precise, concrete and verifiable, and are serious enough to justify ending the employment contractService Public — an unjustified absence that disrupts the business and forces the employer to replace the absent employee being the textbook illustration. Personal grounds recognised in practice include the employee's faute, insuffisance professionnelle, illness where the absence disrupts the operation of the business, inaptitude declared by the médecin du travail, and harassment committed by the employee within the company. No prior warning is legally required before such a dismissal, though the employer must respect any scale of sanctions in an applicable règlement intérieur.

The employer notifies the dismissal by lettre recommandée avec accusé de réception (RAR) stating the grounds. Within the 15 days following that notification, the stated grounds may be clarified further, either on the employer's own initiative or at the employee's request. The employee makes the request by lettre recommandée avec AR or by delivery against receipt (remise contre récépissé). The employer then has 15 days from receipt of the request to supply précisions if it wishes — there is no duty to answer — communicated by lettre RAR or remise contre récépissé.

The employee has one year to challenge the stated grounds before the conseil de prud'hommesService Public, which may order sanctions against the employer for licenciement injustifié or annul the dismissal. The running of that year now turns on three stated cases. Where the employee never asked for précisions, the year runs from notification of the dismissal.Service Public Where the employee asked and the employer replied, it runs from the employer's second letter setting out the grounds.Service Public Where the employee asked and the employer stayed silent, the year runs from notification of the dismissalService Public — the branch that previously had no stated starting point in that situation, leaving the deadline's anchor uncertain for employees whose request went unanswered.

That one-year challenge regime sits alongside the stricter nullity regime for dismissals pronounced on prohibited grounds — discrimination, breach of a fundamental freedom, jury or assessor duties, whistleblowing, legal action over discrimination or男女 equality, testimony about harassment, maternity, paternity, work-accident or occupational-illness protection, protected employee status, strike action and comparable protected situations — where the judge may declare the dismissal void rather than merely unjustified.

Legal basis: Code du travail, articles L1132-1 to L1132-4 on prohibited dismissal grounds, article L1232-1 on cause réelle et sérieuse, and article R1232-13 on requests for précisions on the dismissal grounds.