Lauren Van Wassenhove filed a very attention-grabbing lawsuit against French telco Orange. Wassenhove is looking at life in retirement, but before then, she’s suing her employer for not giving her any work for 20 years while still paying her salary.
Normally, that would sound like a dream. Who wouldn’t want to be paid with no expectations or performance indicators? But for Wassenhove, it was a matter of dignity. She built a lifelong career with the telco and got her start there in 1993, back when it was still called France Télécom.
A few years into her career, however, Wassenhove unfortunately started developing epilepsy and hemiplegia. According to the online publication her, this condition meant paralysis on one side of her body, making it impossible to continue in her previous position. Luckily for her, she had training as an HR officer and was quickly reassigned to a more clerical, desk position as a secretary.
France has very strict labor laws. In fact, when clips of French protests go viral, it’s usually due to a labor dispute — or just another mass disapproval of Emmanuel Macron’s latest political scandal. That’s to say, Orange would have had a pretty herculean task trying to fire Wassenhove because of her disability, even if they wanted to. Wassenhove’s lawyers argue that the company actually wanted to fire her but instead opted to freeze her out of any work at the office, in what she now refers to as “moral harassment.”
According to Wassenhove, in 2002, after her workload had diminished significantly, she requested a transfer to another regional office. But she was denied the transfer, with the company deeming her unfit. She goes on to allege that at that point, she was paid but treated as invisible — no tasks sent her way, nobody even checking if she came to work or not.
“Being paid, at home, not working is not a privilege. It’s very hard to bear,” Wassenhove stated in an earlier interview. She argued that earning a living gives people a sense of self-worth and purpose, and without it, one might fall into despair or even depression. Her lawyers added that the situation took a heavy toll on Wassenhove over the years, highlighting how important diversity is in the workplace — not just in appearance but in the distribution of labor.
Huge companies tend to be forced to release statements when their values come into question, and Orange was no different. When the news was first reported by the Daily Mail in 2024, the company released a statement saying Wassenhove had been kept in the “best conditions” considering her health.
The company also claimed that they tried to find a suitable position for her to return to work but could never figure things out because she was regularly on “sick leave.” Until the case fully plays out in court, these vague statements are probably all we’ll get — but once the case concludes, a real portrayal of Wassenhove’s working situation will finally emerge.
Wassenhove is a mother of two, so the paycheck — regardless of how it came — was always useful to her. But according to her lawyers, she believes Orange’s reasoning behind paying her without giving her work was to use it as a psychological trick to get her to quit her job.
