Avis d'inaptitude after sick leave: 15 days to contest it, and the month after which your salary must be paid again

After a long period of sick leave, a private-sector employee attends a visit with the médecin du travail. That visit sometimes produces an avis d'inaptitude — an opinion that the employee is unfit for the post they hold. It is neither a dismissal nor a disability ruling, but it starts a procedure with very short deadlines, and one of them is fifteen days.

Who can rule someone unfit

Under the rules this is for the médecin du travail alone — the occupational physician, not the treating doctor and not the employer. The opinion does not rest on a single examination: the service-public page describes a medical examination, possible complementary tests, a study of the post and of working conditions, and an exchange with the employer about observations and proposals.

The physician may also order a second examination within 15 days of the first.

That framing matters. Unfitness is a conclusion about the fit between one specific post and one specific state of health — not an assessment of the person.

Fifteen days to contest

The deadline that slips past most easily: both the employee and the employer may contest the opinion before the conseil de prud'hommes, within 15 days of being notified of it.

Fifteen days is very little, and the clock runs from notification — not from the moment the consequences become clear. The typical mistake here is practical rather than legal: someone waits to see what happens, talks to the employer, gathers documents, and finds the window shut while they were still working out where they stood.

What the employer has to do

The rules provide for an obligation de reclassement — a search for another post matching the employee's capacities, taking account of the physician's conclusions and recommendations. The search is to cover available positions in the company and, where there is one, in the group within France.

There is an exception, and it is narrowly drawn. The employer is released from the search only if the opinion states that the employee's state of health makes any professional activity impossible, or that keeping them in employment would be seriously harmful to their health. It is worth checking whether that wording actually appears in the document, because it is what decides whether the employer must look at all.

A month without salary — and what follows it

This is the least widely known part. The rules provide that during the first month of the reclassement search the employer is not required to pay salary. Once that month has passed, the employer must pay the previous salary — until reclassement happens or the contract ends.

The practical conclusion is a single one: write down the date the opinion was issued. Both the 15 days to contest and the month after which payment must resume are counted from it.

If no suitable post exists

Where reclassement fails, the rules allow dismissal on grounds of unfitness. Indemnities are provided for in that case, and their level depends on whether the unfitness is of professional origin — work-related — or non-professional. That distinction affects the amounts, which makes the origin of the unfitness more than an administrative box.

Why this matters to newcomers as much as anyone

The procedure is the same for any private-sector salarié regardless of nationality. Two things make it harder for someone who arrived recently, though: the deadlines are short and run in calendar days, and the correspondence arrives in French, in terms that do not appear in everyday speech — reclassement, visite de reprise, avis d'inaptitude. With two weeks on the clock, no time is budgeted for translation and working out what is being asked.

So three things are worth knowing about this procedure in advance: that only the médecin du travail issues the opinion, that there are 15 days from notification to contest it, and that salary payment resumes after one month.

Working through an individual situation is a job for an avocat or a competent union; this note sets out what the general rules provide and where the deadlines sit.

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Source: Service-Public.fr — Inaptitude au travail d'un salarié après un arrêt maladie, Vérifié le 23 mai 2025.