Employment law
Redeployment and advancement: one word, two regimes not to be confused
At Kayes Agro, a mango processing plant employing 70 people, two files land on the HR manager's desk the same morning. A packer can no longer stand for eight hours at a stretch and asks to change post. A line supervisor is asking to move up a category after six years with the company.
Kayes Agro is a fictitious company, as are the people named in this article: their names serve only as an example. The two files, on the other hand, come up every day. Both are called "redeployment", and that is the source of the confusion: they do not follow the same rules, and routing one down the wrong path is paid for in compensation.
1. What are we actually talking about?
The same word covers two operations that have nothing in common.
| The operation | What it is | What triggers it |
|---|---|---|
| Medical redeployment | Moving to another job an employee whose health no longer allows them to hold their own | An established constraint: it is an obligation |
| Regrading on the scale | Moving an employee from one occupational category to another | New qualifications or responsibilities: it is a management decision |
One arises from a constraint and is imposed on the company. The other falls to its judgment, within the framework set by the collective agreement. The Malian Labour Code deals with them neither in the same place nor in the same way.
Medical redeployment is imposed on you. Regrading on the scale is decided by you.
2. Medical redeployment: what the Code really says, and to whom
Start with what the Code does not say. The Malian Labour Code organises no general unfitness procedure. There are no successive medical examinations, no compulsory consultation of the staff delegates before a redeployment, no one-month deadline to redeploy or dismiss. Those mechanisms, often cited in circulating templates, belong to other legal systems and cannot be transposed as they stand.
What the Code does provide is narrower, but very firm. The labour inspector may require women and children to be examined by a doctor, to verify that the work they are given does not exceed their strength, and that requirement is of right at their own request. Then comes the decisive sentence (Labour Code, article L.188).
A woman or a child may not be kept in a job recognised as beyond their strength and must be assigned to suitable work. Failing that, the contract is terminated by act of the employer.
| What the text says | What to take from it |
|---|---|
| Keeping the person in the job is prohibited | Noting an incompatibility and doing nothing is not an option |
| Assignment to suitable work is compulsory | The search must be genuine, and leave a trace |
| Failing that, the contract is terminated by act of the employer | The termination is not neutral: it has the effects of a termination at the company's initiative |
The last line matters most, and it is the one least often read. A company that cannot redeploy does not merely "note" unfitness: it takes a termination attributable to itself, with the compensation consequences that follow.
What the Code provides for other employees
Outside article L.188, the Code does not ignore unfitness: it mentions it elsewhere, but to draw a financial consequence rather than a procedure. Travel and transport costs for the worker and their family fall on the employer where the worker becomes permanently unfit for the duties for which they were hired (Labour Code, article L.164).
Two further texts set the practical frame. The duty to provide a medical or health service falls on every undertaking, the Social Security Code setting the arrangements (Labour Code, article L.177): the medical opinion is obtained from that service, not from the employee's own doctor. And where unfitness follows a workplace accident, the victim has the right to be admitted to occupational retraining, where appropriate with an employer, under a standard contract approved by the labour inspector (Social Security Code, Articles 107 and 110).
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3. Running a redeployment search, in five steps
The Code does not describe the method. Practice yields five steps, each of which leaves a useful trace the day the decision is challenged.
- Obtain the written medical opinion, putting the question the other way round: what can this employee still do?
- List the available posts in the company and, where relevant, in the neighbouring establishment, with their category and physical demands.
- Examine adjustments before transfers: hours, tools, allocation of tasks. An adjusted post is often better than a changed one.
- Make the offer in writing, stating the job, the category and the corresponding pay. The employee must be able to answer knowing what is at stake.
- Record any refusal, or the absence of a suitable post, with details of the searches carried out.
One point of vigilance dominates all five. If the post offered means lower pay, a change of place or a change of job, it constitutes a substantial modification of the contract. Substantial means any clause without which the worker would not have contracted, such as pay, working conditions, place of work, or the job held (Labour Code, article L.58).
It therefore requires the employee's agreement. And if they accept, the modification takes effect only after a period equivalent to the notice period, up to a maximum of one month.
4. Occupational grading: the scale does not come from the Code
The Labour Code sets no classification scale. It designates the instrument that does: collective agreements must contain provisions on the determination of occupational category classifications, the wages applicable by occupational category, and the organisation and operation of joint grading committees (Labour Code, article L.79).
That last mention is crucial and almost always overlooked. The collective agreement provides for a joint grading committee: that is the forum in which a category dispute is argued, before any litigation. A company unaware of its existence deprives itself of the mechanism designed to settle precisely that kind of disagreement.
A category dispute does not start in court. It starts before the joint grading committee.
A wrong category spreads through four documents
The grading category is not an internal payroll matter. It appears in four documents the Code requires, which is what makes an error hard to undo.
| The document | What it must state | The article |
|---|---|---|
| The probationary engagement | The job and the occupational category of the worker | L.30 |
| The payslip | The job and the occupational category | L.105 |
| The employer register | The details of the persons and contracts of all workers employed | L.130 |
| The work certificate | The occupational grading category under the collective agreement covering the worker | L.61 |
The last of these is the most formidable: it is the one the company itself hands the employee on departure, and the one they will produce years later in support of their claim.
5. What the category governs: five quantified entitlements
| What depends on the category | The rule |
|---|---|
| The applicable minimum wage | Work performed during probation is paid at the rate of the category corresponding to the job for which the worker was hired (L.31) |
| The seniority bonus | Calculated as a percentage of the minimum wage of the grading category: 3% after 3 years, 5% after 5 years, then 1% per additional year, up to a ceiling of 15% (L.97) |
| The notice period | 8 days, 1 month, 2 months or 3 months depending on category, absent a collective agreement (L.41) |
| The probation period | In principle equal to the notice period, capped at 6 months including renewal (L.30) |
| The retirement age | 60 in category A or equivalent, 58 in categories B to E in the private sector (L.60) |
One line of the scale, five quantified consequences. That is what makes the accuracy of grading far more important than it looks, and why promoting an employee changes their pay, their seniority bonus, their notice period and sometimes their retirement age all at once.
The calculation, line by line
Example. The Kayes Agro line supervisor has six years of continuous service. His seniority bonus is therefore 5% for the five years, plus 1% for the sixth, that is 6% (Labour Code, article L.97). Suppose the applicable collective agreement sets the minimum wage of his current category at XOF 60,000, and that of the next category at XOF 75,000.
| The item | Current category | After regrading |
|---|---|---|
| Category minimum wage | XOF 60,000 | XOF 75,000 |
| Seniority bonus (6%) | 60,000 × 6% = XOF 3,600 | 75,000 × 6% = XOF 4,500 |
| Monthly gap on the bonus alone | - | + XOF 900 |
Nine hundred francs a month on the bonus alone, on top of the difference in basic pay. Regrading does not move one line: it moves several, and it moves them for the rest of the career, including in the severance calculation when the day comes.
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6. Advancement: bounded, not discretionary
Advancement (moving from one step to another within a category) and regrading (moving to a higher category) follow the criteria set by the collective agreement or the establishment agreement: periodic appraisals, minimum service, qualifications, new responsibilities.
The Code adds no scale, but it lays down three limits that apply whatever system is chosen.
- The general prohibition of discrimination. Any distinction, exclusion or preference that destroys or impairs equality of opportunity and treatment in employment and vocational training is prohibited, in particular on the basis of invalidity, disability, HIV and AIDS (Labour Code, article L.4).
- The specific prohibition on trade-union grounds. No employer may take account of opinions, union membership or union activity in reaching decisions, in particular on advancement, pay and the granting of social benefits (Labour Code, article L.257).
- Equal pay. Occupational categories and classifications, and the criteria for promotion, must be common to workers of both sexes, and job evaluation methods must rest on objective considerations (Labour Code, article L.95).
These three rules have a very concrete reach: an advancement system must rest on written, verifiable criteria. Not out of formalism, but because without them a contested decision can no longer be explained by anything but the person, which is precisely the ground on which the employer does not want to stand.
7. A closer look: demotion is not a unilateral measure
Downward regrading does not exist as a decision the employer takes alone. Demoting an employee affects the job held and the pay, and therefore substantial clauses within the meaning of article L.58.
It therefore requires their agreement. If they refuse, the employer may terminate the contract, but that termination is attributable to the employer and must follow the dismissal procedure. A dismissal following the refusal is wrongful only if the offer to modify proceeded from an intent to harm or blameworthy carelessness, which leaves the company some room, provided the offer is serious and justified.
See also Open-ended contract: probation, changes and termination.
Key takeaways in 6 points
- From the first minute, separate medical redeployment, which is an obligation, from regrading on the scale, which is a decision.
- Do not transpose an unfitness procedure from another legal system: the Malian Code organises none.
- Document the search for a post: where no redeployment is possible, the termination is attributable to the employer (L.188).
- Look for the scale in the collective agreement, and look there for the joint grading committee too (L.79).
- Recalculate the five entitlements the category governs after every change: minimum wage, seniority bonus, notice, probation, retirement age.
- Write down the advancement criteria, and never demote without the employee's agreement (L.58).