France’s highest appeals court, the Cour de cassation – upheld the right to disconnect law in the case of a long-distance truck driver who was sacked by his boss, reports The Local FR. The French law ensures that employees could not be sanctioned if they failed to respond to a message sent outside of their normal working hours.

In the case of the truck driver, the driver was sacked after posting abusive messages about his boss on social media, after the boss had sanctioned him for not returning phone calls which were made outside of his normal working hours.

On three occasions the driver’s manager had telephoned him with details of changes to his work schedule for the following day. The driver argued that some of the calls were made to his personal number while he was on holiday, and therefore he should not be obliged to answer. He was then sacked for gross misconduct because of the abusive messages on Facebook, but took the company to court, with the case eventually coming before the Cour de cassation.

The court upheld his sacking over the abusive messages and other disciplinary actions relating to taking photos while driving - but ruled in his favour when it came to out-of-hours contact. It ruled that an employee who cannot be reached out-of-hours on his personal number is not at fault and cannot be sanctioned, further clarifying that it doesn’t matter whether the employee is on holiday or has simply finished work for the day - out-of-hours covers all periods outside of normal working hours.