Naf Naf: Court cancels redundancy plan

French fashion retailer Naf Naf’s redundancy plan, introduced in October 2023 and relating to more than 100 jobs, was cancelled on Tuesday by the court owing to lack of control by the relevant regional authority, DRIEETS, according to a ruling whose text was gleaned by the AFP agency.

Naf Naf had filed for receivership in September 2023. In October, it told the employees’ union representatives it was cutting 88 open-ended contract jobs, terminating 26 fixed-term and work-study positions, and modifying another 47 employment contracts, as indicated in the ruling by the Montreuil administrative court.

It was then up to the Ile-de-France Regional and Interdepartmental Directorate for the Economy, Employment, Labour and Solidarity (DRIEETS) to carry out a number of checks, including “verifying that the criteria adopted with respect to the redundancies were in conformity with applicable legal and contractual provisions.”

And that “the job categories involved included all the employees who were performing, within the company, functions of the same nature that required common professional training.”

However, the court noted that “it is not apparent from the terms of the approval decision, nor from any other document on file, nor even from the administrative defence documents, that DRIEETS had carried out these checks.”

Sarah Pichout, a representative of the Sud Commerces et Services union, told AFP that “we are happy because [this ruling] will allow employees to challenge their dismissal with the labour tribunal,” and to claim additional compensation, having been dismissed with “the bare minimum.”

Naf Naf currently has 621 employees in France, and operates 112 directly owned stores and 60 affiliated ones, according to the CFDT union.

The company is heavily indebted, notably owing to rents that went unpaid during the pandemic. It was placed in judicial receivership in September 2023, and it then began to slash jobs and close down some of its stores.

In June 2023, Naf Naf had cut 37 jobs, according to CFDT.

In October 2023, CFDT announced that Naf Naf was planning to close 17 stores as part of a new redundancy plan, putting more than 100 jobs at risk.

Naf Naf was founded in 1973 by the brothers Gérard and Patrick Pariente, and had already been placed in receivership in May 2020.