The High Court of Cassation and Justice has established that the workers’ direct action, regulated through the article 1488 of the Civil Code of 1864, confers, by exception from the principle of relativity of the contract effects, the possibility that only the workers can be against the work beneficiary and only for their payment, that is the rights correlative to the performed work and only as far as she/he is liable to pay the debt to the contractor.
According to the article 1488 of the Civil Code of 1864: bricklayers, carpenters and other workers involved in the construction of a building or in performing other works in tender, can claim their payment from the principal, for as much she/he would owe to the entrepreneur at the moment of the complaint.
The legal entity, subcontractor, cannot be assimilated to the notion of worker, which is referred in the article 1488 of the Civil Code of 1864, because this legal entity does not perform actual construction activity, but it represents the entity within which the activity is performed through employed workers or other co-opted persons in order to complete the contracting activity, and the payment to which the legal text is referred belongs only to the workers (their payment) for the personal work performed and not to the subcontracting company; the subcontractor has at disposal the action in contractual liability against the contractor for the payment of the rights correlative to the obligations assumed through the subcontract. (The Decision no. 3741 of 25th November 2014 stated by Second Civil Section of the High Court of Cassation and Justice having as subject the workers’ direct action)
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