Background
Since October 1, 2019, Amazon France Logistique had applied the national collective agreement governing road transport and transport-related activities. That agreement covers employers whose principal activity is providing logistics services for third parties involving goods entrusted to them that they do not own.
On December 31, 2020, the Fédération des services CFDT brought proceedings seeking an order requiring the company to apply instead the collective agreement for distance-selling and e-commerce businesses. After the Versailles Court of Appeal rejected all of the union’s claims on February 27, 2025, the union appealed to the Court of Cassation.
The union argued that Amazon France Logistique’s warehousing, order preparation, packaging, returns management, and shipping operations were economically and functionally integrated into the Amazon group’s distance-selling business. It contended that the lower court should have considered that integrated commercial purpose rather than treating the logistics operations as autonomous merely because separate Amazon entities owned the goods and operated the marketplace.
The Court’s Holding
The Social Chamber dismissed the appeal. Under Article L. 2261-2 of the Labour Code, the applicable collective agreement is determined by the principal activity actually carried on by the employer. The Court contrasted the transport agreement’s coverage of third-party logistics services with the distance-selling and e-commerce agreement’s coverage of businesses principally engaged in retail through any medium or in online commercial-intermediation services, including internet marketplaces.
The Court held that the Court of Appeal had acted within its authority as factfinder, without distorting the evidence, when it found that Amazon France Logistique’s principal activity was logistics performed for legally distinct third-party companies. That activity was distinct and autonomous from the buying and selling conducted through Amazon.fr.
Accordingly, the Court of Appeal correctly concluded that Amazon France Logistique fell under the road transport and related activities collective agreement, not the distance-selling and e-commerce agreement. It was not required to conduct the additional group-level economic-integration analysis requested by the union. The Court also rejected several other challenges without a specially reasoned decision because they were manifestly incapable of supporting reversal.
Key Takeaways
- In France, an employer’s applicable collective agreement is determined by the principal activity that the employer itself actually carries on.
- Logistics performed exclusively for legally distinct companies within the same corporate group may remain an autonomous third-party logistics activity.
- Operational integration into an e-commerce supply chain does not, by itself, make a logistics company’s principal activity distance selling or online marketplace intermediation.
Why It Matters
The decision confirms an entity-specific approach to determining collective-agreement coverage within integrated corporate groups. A subsidiary supporting an online retail business is not necessarily governed by the retail or e-commerce agreement applicable to that broader commercial model when the subsidiary’s own principal activity is independently classifiable as logistics.
For employers, unions, and employees in platform-based supply chains, the ruling places particular importance on the factual characterization of the employing entity’s work and on the legal separation between group companies, rather than solely on the ultimate commercial purpose served by their combined operations.