Employment law
Internal rules (règlement intérieur)
In Ségou, on the floor of Faso Plastiques, a yellowing notice sets out the working hours and announces a XOF 5,000 deduction for every late arrival. Nobody knows who wrote it, or when. The day a worker challenges his suspension, the labour inspector asks a single question: what is the date of the stamp? There is none. The rules, the sanction and the deduction fall together.
Faso Plastiques is a fictional company. It serves only as an example throughout this article.
1. What exactly are we talking about?
Internal rules are the document by which the head of the company sets the rules of life in the business: how work is organised, what is expected of everyone, and what happens when a rule is not kept.
They are often described as the establishment’s “in-house law”. The image holds, on one condition: like any law, they exist only once the adoption procedure has been followed. Rules posted on the wall but never stamped by the labour inspector, or stamped but applied too early, cannot be relied on against workers.
Why does the law impose this weight? Because a sanction is only justified if the rule was known in advance. The procedure exists for that: to make the rules public before they are applied.
The most common mistake
Believing the title of the document changes its regime. An “internal charter”, a “service note” or a “disciplinary memo” that in fact sets general, permanent disciplinary rules falls under the internal-rules regime, whatever it is called. The court and the inspector look at the content, not the letterhead.
Content matters. Procedure decides whether the rules exist at all.
2. Who must have them? The threshold of ten
Internal rules are compulsory in every industrial, commercial or agricultural undertaking employing at least ten employees (Labour Code, article L.62). With its 22 employees, Faso Plastiques has been within that scope for a long time.
Below ten employees, the employer may draw them up if he wishes. But if he does, he follows exactly the same procedure: there is no “light” version of internal rules for small structures.
Having none while being required to is not merely a litigation risk: it is an offence punishable by a fine of XOF 50,000 to 200,000, rising to XOF 100,000–400,000 on a repeat offence (Labour Code, article L.318).
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3. Four areas, not one more
The content of internal rules is exhaustively listed. They are devoted exclusively to four matters (Labour Code, article L.64).
| Area | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Technical organisation of work | Hours, entry and exit, exceptional arrangements, use of premises and equipment |
| Discipline | General and permanent rules of conduct, scale of applicable sanctions |
| Health and safety | Requirements applicable on site, protective equipment, what to do in an incident |
| Arrangements for paying wages | Date, place and form of payment, handing over the payslip |
Anything outside those four areas has no place in internal rules. In practice, it is always the same four additions that cause trouble.
| Clause often encountered | Why it is irregular |
|---|---|
| Setting or changing remuneration | Pay belongs to the contract and the collective agreement, not to the rules |
| Fines or deductions for breaches | Fines are expressly forbidden to the employer |
| Distinctions by sex, family situation or beliefs | A discriminatory provision has no effect and exposes the employer to damages |
| Waiver of a statutory or agreed right | The rules cannot reduce a right already acquired |
Internal rules organise work and discipline. They set neither pay nor jobs.
4. The procedure: four steps, three deadlines
It is the procedure that turns a draft into an enforceable norm. It has four steps, and each carries its own deadline.
| Step | What to do | Deadline |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Consultation | Hand a copy of the draft to the staff delegates, by a method that certifies delivery and gives it a certain date | 15 days for their written observations; no reply counts as acceptance |
| 2. Transmission | Send the labour inspector the draft in duplicate, the signed original of the delegates’ observations, and a statement of reasons for any rejection | - |
| 3. Stamp | The inspector stamps the draft, or requires the withdrawal or amendment of provisions contrary to laws, regulations and collective agreements | One month |
| 4. Entry into force | The rules take effect | 20 days after the stamp, the inspectorate’s date and seal being conclusive |
These four steps and their deadlines are set by the Labour Code, articles L.65, L.66 and L.68.
The two mistakes that come back most often
Sending the draft without the delegates’ observations. The file is then incomplete, and the inspector returns it. The fifteen days start again.
Applying the rules as soon as they are stamped. The twenty days must run first. A sanction imposed during that period rests on a text not yet in force: it has no basis, and the sanctioned worker will say so.
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5. Posting: the last step, and the one that gets forgotten
Once stamped, the rules are sent to the staff delegates, who bring their content to the workers’ attention. They must then be posted in the hiring premises and at the workplaces, in a suitable, easily accessible spot, and kept constantly legible (Labour Code, article L.67).
This is not decorative. Posting is what makes the rules knowable by everyone. A properly stamped text filed away in an office supports poorly the argument that the worker ought to have known it, and that argument is exactly what a sanction rests on.
At Faso Plastiques, the yellowing notice on the floor was not the internal rules: it was an unstamped service note. The company therefore had nothing enforceable to post.
6. The sanctions the rules may provide for, and two absolute prohibitions
The rules set the scale of sanctions applicable in the company. The sanctions commonly used run from the lightest to the most serious:
- the warning, a written call to order;
- the reprimand, a more serious written sanction placed on file;
- the suspension from duty, which suspends the contract and may not exceed eight days;
- termination of the contract, where the facts justify it.
Two absolute limits frame that power. Fines are forbidden: the employer may impose no pecuniary sanction. And no deduction may be made from remuneration other than those the law provides: tax and social levies, reimbursements provided for in contracts and collective agreements, lawful attachments and assignments (Labour Code, articles L.34, L.69 and L.121).
A financial sanction dressed up as a deduction is still a fine.
What an in-house fine costs
Example. Faso Plastiques deducts XOF 5,000 per late arrival. Over one month, twelve employees are affected.
- Sums deducted: 12 × 5,000 = XOF 60,000, to be repaid in full.
- Fine incurred for breaching the ban on fines: XOF 20,000 to 100,000, rising to XOF 40,000–200,000 and 15 days to 3 months’ imprisonment on a repeat offence (Labour Code, article L.318).
- Fine incurred for an irregular deduction: XOF 10,000 to 18,000, rising to XOF 20,000–50,000 on a repeat offence (Labour Code, article L.321).
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On how a sanction unfolds, from establishing the facts to notification, see Sanctioning without getting it wrong.
7. What the rules cannot do
Three limits come back regularly in the drafts submitted to the inspectorate.
They create no right against the worker
Internal rules can neither reduce a statutory or agreed benefit nor introduce an obligation contrary to the law. A clause doing so has no effect, even if it was stamped in error.
They do not replace the contract
The job, the pay and the place of work belong to the individual contract. Changing them through the rules has no effect: a substantial change to the contract goes through a proposal made to the worker, which he may refuse.
They cannot be amended unilaterally
Any amendment follows exactly the same procedure as adoption: consultation of the delegates, transmission to the inspector, stamp, then twenty days’ wait. On drafting method and the full back-planning, see Drafting the internal rules.
A closer look: the company with several establishments
A company with several establishments may draw up, for each establishment or part of an establishment, annexed rules containing the provisions specific to that site: its own hours, specific hazards, local organisation of work (Labour Code, article L.63).
That annex exempts nothing. It follows the same procedure as the main rules: consultation, transmission, stamp, twenty days. A company that opens a second unit and applies head office’s rules there without a stamped annex ends up with a text that does not fit and that, on everything specific to the new site, cannot be relied on.
Key takeaways in 6 points
- Draw up internal rules from ten employees in an industrial, commercial or agricultural undertaking.
- Write only four things into them: organisation of work, discipline, health and safety, arrangements for paying wages.
- Hand the draft to the delegates against a certain date, and allow them fifteen days to respond.
- Send the labour inspector the draft in duplicate, together with the delegates’ written observations.
- Apply the rules only twenty days after the stamp, and post them at hiring premises and workplaces.
- Ban every fine and every disciplinary deduction, and cap suspension from duty at eight days.