After the announcement of the postponement of the retirement age to 64 by the head of government, a major movement is already looming on Thursday, February 19. Bertrand Martinot, labor market expert at the Institut Montaigne, deciphers for The Express this pension reform. According to him, the rejection of this text by all the unions and by some French people is the “symptom of the political crisis that the country is going through”.
L’Express: During the presentation of the pension reform, Elisabeth Borne insisted on the “fair” and “balanced” aspect of this project. Is this your analysis?
Bertrand Martinot: I won’t use those words, because some may indeed think that making people work longer is fundamentally unfair. I would say rather that it is a parametric reform, necessary, with a certain number of shock absorbers, such as the revaluation of small pensions, the protection of those who are most in difficulty or the preservation of the devices on careers long. The government has not pushed back the age of the full rate, which remains fixed at 67, and is not shifted by two years as was the case during the reform put in place by Nicolas Sarkozy. On the question of balance, everyone will have to work longer, except for a certain part of the executives and the self-employed who are already retiring late because they enter the labor market late. The reform is therefore demanding, but the rewards are quite satisfactory.
This does not prevent the unions and the opposition from denouncing a “brutal reform”. Did the government listen to them enough during the consultations?
We have to stop with that, we have been consulting on the subject of pensions for 40 years! We cannot say that the reform comes out of nowhere. Since the Balladur reform, the arguments are the same on both sides. We also had a long debate in 2018 and 2019 when the government was considering introducing a universal plan. All this gives the impression of attending a bad play. And we must not forget that during the legislative elections, the French elected LR deputies or from the presidential majority who carried this project in complete transparency. But behind all this, the problem is deeper than that of pensions: it is a symptom of the political crisis that the country is going through. The pension reform is basically a point of crystallization of other discontent.
The opposition promises to put the French in the street, yet the executive does not seem so worried. Do you think that the next few weeks will be marked by a massive movement against pension reform?
Nowadays, it becomes more and more difficult to predict the evolution of social movements, because the posture of trade unions is no longer decisive, as can be seen with self-organized movements. We are far from the time when the railway worker Bernard Thibault held the CGT at the SNCF and where it was possible to discuss. This makes social movements random. The risk is that the challenge coagulates with other discontent.
Can the reform evolve during the parliamentary debate?
On certain points yes, such as the development of the end of career, but nothing will change on the main parameters. The room for maneuver is not very large.
Even on the increase in social security contributions, as demanded by François Bayrou?
We can technically increase pension contributions, but work in France is already the most taxed of all OECD countries. We have to stop believing that all public finance problems can be solved by tax increases. Afterwards, we must not complain about purchasing power or deindustrialization!
Once this reform is over, will we finally be done with the question of pensions? Or will the subject of financial balance come up again in a few years?
This will depend on two parameters. Firstly, the demographic evolution: the decline should not accelerate, but the fertility rate should stabilize. Second, the evolution of productivity. If it recovers compared to what we have known since the 2000s, the reform will make it possible to balance the system in the long term. However, if the current trend continues, the problem will arise again in 5-10 years. And beyond pensions, the question will arise for the entire social protection system. Health expenditure will explode, not to mention the burden of debt and the colossal investments necessary, for example in the care of dependency, the energy transition, security, the search for justice… It may therefore be necessary put the subject back on the table, but in a more global context, not just to finance pensions. I may be going to put things bluntly, but there will come a time when we will ask ourselves: is it better to work three more terms, or have to go abroad to get treatment in the best conditions?