What could explain differences in decision-making across French labor courts?

Uncertainty about the outcome of labor court proceedings is often singled out as a possible factor dissuading new hires. This uncertainty would be caused by the fact that similar cases brought before the labor courts would be judged very differently from one case to another, or from one jurisdiction to another. After having recalled the historical objective of the French labor courts, their mode of operation and their recent evolutions, we show that the decisions taken in those courts do indeed vary strongly from one jurisdiction to another. The source of this variability remains however uncertain: it can reflect both the arbitrariness of labor court justice and the fact that cases judged by different jurisdictions are of different types and seriousness. This article is finally based on the work of Desrieux and Espinosa to show that jurisdictions in which the judges elected by the employees belong to more campaigning unions do not take decisions that are more favorable to workers than other jurisdictions. This result makes it possible to rule out a possible source of bias that could have explained differences across jurisdictions in the share of cases judged in favor of workers.