| Award 1254

International articles of agreement on a yacht – Non- payment of wages – Expeditious procedure (yes) – Competence of the CAMP (yes) – Unilateral breach of the employment contract (yes) – Reimbursement of costs and payment of wages.
After having been hired by a foreign company for one summer as the crew of a large yacht, seven sailors left the yacht at the end of the season without receiving their wages. The maritime arbitration court of Paris (CAMP), after recognizing its jurisdiction and ruling on the grounds of the arbitration clause stipulated in the sailors’ contracts and invoked by the latter, decided that the sailors had a permanent employment contract and that the date of the breach of their contract was the day on which they finally left the yacht.
The arbitral tribunal regularized payments of the wages owing to the sailors in the requested proportions and awarded damages to each sailors who provided evidence of their employment on board whether wrongful breach of their employment contract, non-payment of wages, or failure to register them with a social security system.
Lastly, the tribunal recognized the existence of a confusion of interests and activity between the employing company and its manager: the latter was more specifically considered as a joint employer, and was therefore sentenced jointly and severally with the company.