Wage inequality: Asking for salary slips from male colleagues is possible
Publié le 11 mai 2023 - Directorate for Legal and Administrative Information (Prime Minister)
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To prove pay inequality, an employee may legitimately request the disclosure of pay slips of male employees occupying positions of comparable level to her own. This is what the Court of Cassation has just recalled in a judgment published in the bulletin issued by the Social Chamber on 8 March 2023.
An employee dismissed by her employer considers that she has been paid unequally compared with several male colleagues who have held the position she held.
The Court of Appeal, in the context of the right to evidence, ordered the employer to communicate to the applicant the pay slips of male employees employed in positions comparable to his own. The employer is appealing to the Court of Cassation because that communication would infringe the private life of the employees concerned.
The Court of Cassation dismisses the appeal. For her, the communication of these pay slips was indispensable to the exercise of the right to evidence and proportionate to the aim pursued, namely ‘the defense of the legitimate interest of the employee in equal treatment between men and women in matters of employment and occupation’.
The Court adds that the scope of the production of the documents sought must be limited. For example, the newsletters must conceal personal data with the exception of first and last names, the conventional classification, the detailed monthly remuneration and the cumulative total gross remuneration per calendar year.
