“Boldness” to “resist the headwinds”: Emmanuel Macron and Elisabeth Borne sounded the mobilization of the government on Wednesday January 4 on the edge of the test of fire on pensions on which the turn of the second five-year term will partly depend of the head of state. The time was serious for the first Council of Ministers of 2023, with a climate darkened by the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, inflation which weighs on companies and the French and a health system out of breath.
First major mortgage at the start of the year, the pension reform which will be presented on January 10 to the French then on the 23rd in the Council of Ministers, before a potentially stormy examination in the National Assembly and the risk of a sling in the street . For Renaissance MP Marc Ferracci, companies have a role to play in relaunching social dialogue.
L’Express: Between the reform of retreats, the content of the decree on unemployment insurance and the project to transfer the collection of contributions from Agirc-Arrco to Urssaf, social dialogue seems blocked and the social return very tense. Has the government’s promise to change its method fizzled?
Marc Ferracci: The return to work is certainly tense, but that does not mean that social dialogue is blocked. We need to widen the focus a bit, and make the distinction between the interprofessional level on the one hand and the branches and companies on the other. Since the first five years, the political software that we have been trying to put in place has been the same. We assume that we want to strengthen the responsibility of the State and of Parliament on subjects which have hitherto been the subject of interprofessional negotiations, such as unemployment insurance, because it is the State which is ultimately responsible for the results in terms of unemployment and employment.
In return, we wanted to give more space to social dialogue in the branches and companies, and agreements at this level have multiplied thanks in particular to ordinances.
This does not prevent the unions from being reassembled: how to defuse the situation?
Regarding the pension reform in particular, we knew from the start that all the trade unions would be against raising the retirement age, this is not a surprise. The consultation that took place with the social partners must make it possible to achieve the most balanced reform possible, taking into account specific situations, for long careers or hardship for example, or the minimum contribution.
Then, it is necessary to give perspectives to the interprofessional dialogue where it is legitimate. I am thinking, for example, of the Universal Time Savings Account (CETU), a long-standing proposal by the CFDT and which is included in the presidential program. It will also be interesting to look at the proposals made by the social partners during the Labor Conference, in particular with regard to the aspirations of employees whose relationship to work has been disrupted by the Covid crisis.
The government has backtracked on the “surprise” part of the decree on unemployment insurance aimed at reducing the duration of compensation by 40% if unemployment falls below 6%, a measure which had provoked the ire of the unions on the eve of Christmas. Was it a tactical error?
If there may have been a small error in method on the part of the government, we must also see a little theater on the side of the social partners. The idea of another threshold had been broached in the discussions with Olivier Dussopt, admittedly perhaps not in such a precise manner. But it is true that the ambiguity could have been avoided.
Once this question of the method has been evacuated, it is necessary to emphasize that a modulation system needs several thresholds to adapt as finely as possible to the labor market. If we are satisfied with a threshold of 9%, it is a bit crude. It is therefore necessary to continue the reflection.
You recalled the government’s philosophy, which is to give more space to social dialogue in companies. How can this aspiration be reconciled with unions that are less and less representative?
You have to act in two ways. First, give them more grain to grind, by authorizing more subjects for negotiation within companies, especially since we are the developed country which most systematically extends branch agreements. Obviously, this cannot be done without strengthening employee representatives. The French specificity is to have a multiplicity of unions, which causes greater conflict and less legitimacy. We have also seen it during the Christmas strikes at the SNCF: even representative unions sometimes no longer control the base.
Consideration should be given to raising the representativeness thresholds, which are very low, and to increasing the number of members via incentives. This reflection is also connected to the project on the sharing of value, which has been discussed a lot in recent weeks. We cannot be satisfied with approaching it only through the improvement of mechanisms such as participation. Action must be taken to strengthen the bargaining power of employees within companies.