It’s a play whose script is almost already written in advance. The place: Matignon. The moment: Wednesday, April 5 at 10 a.m. The leading roles: Elisabeth Borne and the leaders of the inter-union. The story: how to rebuild the bond when trust has been broken? After the psychodrama of 49.3, the Prime Minister is looking at all costs for a new way to bounce back. Except that the path is extremely narrow, not to say blocked. As long as the Constitutional Council has not delivered its opinion on the pension bill on April 14, the unions are not really in favor of lowering their guard and putting away their placards. There are therefore few concrete things to expect from this famous meeting. Otherwise a few sensational statements at the end of the debates.
Like Sophie Binet, the new general secretary of the CGT, all the union leaders decided to start the meeting by reaffirming their disagreement on the postponement of the legal age of departure from 62 to 64, defending their own proposals. . Opposite, the Matignon tenant has already announced the color last weekend, saying: “We can’t put a bill on hold, it doesn’t exist.” Within the majority, we especially point to the legal trap in which the government is trapped if it wanted to postpone the implementation of the law by a few months after September 1st. “As the text on pensions has been included in a Social Security amending finance bill, the first financial effects must be visible in the year 2023”, underlines Renaissance MP Marc Ferracci. So much for the official text of the play.
Behind the scenes, however, the reformist unions are beginning to work on the elements and the progress they could obtain within the framework of the future Labor law which should theoretically be completed by the end of May and presented for first reading before the summer break. The Labor Law is this gigantic legislative package that will give birth to France Travail, the body that must oversee all the stakeholders – regions, departments, Pôle emploi, local missions – in charge of the various elements of employment policy . The objective was hammered home during the last presidential campaign: to achieve full employment at the end of the five-year term. For this, a multitude of projects must be launched. But a first technical problem is already on the horizon: the calendar. “Going quickly on the Labor Law is incompatible with peaceful negotiations on major subjects such as the employment of seniors, wear and tear at work or the RSA. We should already turn back the clocks”, observes Cyril Chabanier, the president of the CFTC . At the CFDT, we rather speak of a “decency period” to start talking again.
Among the subjects likely to put a little ointment on the raw wounds of social dialogue, we first find the subject of the sharing of value. While the executive and the unions were struggling on pensions, the social partners managed to tune their violins, carving in stone a national interprofessional agreement on the subject, on February 10. On the menu: a number of proposals to reduce the pay gap between men and women, but above all ways to extend profit-sharing and participation schemes to small businesses – between 11 and 50 employees – provided that they have made profits over the previous three years. An agreement that the Confederation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (CPME) has lip serviced. However, the government has undertaken to transpose this interprofessional agreement as it stands. The famous Labor Law could be the appropriate legislative vehicle to do so.
The CET, the magic card
The subject of the universal time savings account (CET) should also be at the top of the pile. The advantage? The idea has been supported for a very long time by the CFDT and was taken up by Emmanuel Macron during the presidential campaign. Today, barely 15% of employees benefit from a CET. Two criteria should prevail: universality, whatever the size of the company, and portability, like the famous training account which follows the employee throughout his professional life. “The CET would also allow certain employees who have saved days on this account to retire earlier if they wish”, remarks MP Marc Ferracci.
Last big subject which the government should seize to patch things up with the social partners: the employment of seniors. While the senior index could be challenged by the Constitutional Council, other measures are on the table to increase the employment rate of employees over 58. The objective is to prevent the postponement of the legal retirement age from resulting in an increase in the number of older unemployed. If the option of a reduction in targeted charges does not seem to be favored by either the government or the unions, the government is working on a form of “senior bonus”. Companies are often reluctant to hire a senior employee because their salary expectations are too high. To unblock the situation, unemployment insurance could pay the person concerned the difference in salary between the new position they accept and the allowance previously received.
The RSA irritant
Alongside these flagship measures likely to calm the unions, an irritant remains, that of the RSA. Already, during the presidential campaign, Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to impose a weekly activity of fifteen to twenty hours on RSA recipients had sparked the ire of the left. To get the social partners on board on this explosive subject, they will first have to agree on the acknowledgment of failure of the system. Very costly (19 billion euros per year on average), this expense borne by the departments has exploded over the last decade. Worse, the RSA is also often a trap from which it is very difficult to get out. A report published in early 2022 by the Court of Auditors reveals that seven years after the entry into the RSA of a cohort of recipients, only 34% of them have found a job and among them only a third has a stable job. “The obligation of activity has nothing to do with free work. It would be an activity linked to professional integration, training time, professional experience. Or time devoted to looking for accommodation, childcare… So many elements which are also peripheral brakes on the resumption of employment”, pleads Marc Ferracci. Vague enough to tense the unions.