The Senate adopted this Monday, March 6 an amendment aimed at promoting the employment of seniors, by creating a new type of permanent contract (CDI) for workers aged over 60. This “senior CDI”, as it is called, would make it possible to entrust seniors aged 60 or over with end-of-career assignments such as coaching young people, on a share of working time that could go up to 20% . Employers will benefit from an exemption from family contributions, subject to their commitment to keep their employee until he can retire at full rate.
“Current employment tools for seniors are not sufficient,” said René-Paul Savary (LR), one of the rapporteurs. France is indeed below the European average for employment of 55-64 year olds (56% against 60.5%). The latter specified that the amendment had been drafted “on the proposal of a number of social partners”, who would be responsible for defining the terms of application, branch by branch.
The opposing government
On the government side, we are very circumspect, not to say opposed to this “senior CDI”, whose amendment received an unfavorable opinion. The Minister of Public Accounts, Gabriel Attal, said he was “rather skeptical” about the “contribution reductions targeted at an age”. He especially pointed to the risk of “windfall effect” and “threshold effect”. “If you exempt from the age of 60, what will happen to people who are 58 or 59, who want to be recruited? We will tell them you will cost us more than at 60, so let’s wait two years”, illustrates the minister, who underlines “the risk that the problem will be shifted to those who are just before 60 years old”. Because of the exemptions, Gabriel Attal insists on a “cost of 800 million euros for the family branch, which finds itself in deficit from the year 2025”, if “the current recruitments, beyond 60 years, are done with the senior CDI.”
The president of the LR group, Bruno Retailleau, stepped up to defend this amendment in person. “There would have been a windfall effect if the contract was aimed at over 60s already in the company. This will not be the case, it will be people who are getting out of unemployment”, advances the senator from Vendée. Above all, “we strongly contest the cost of the government, because the government only looks at the line of expenditure”, he advances. The boss of the LR senators stresses that the 100,000 seniors potentially concerned would find themselves out of unemployment, synonymous with a saving of “more than a billion euros”, according to the elected representative on the right, who concludes: “This does not is not a measure that will cost, but that will pay off.”