The contours of the future reform of the RSA are becoming clearer. The LR right and the deputies of the presidential majority found this week a series of compromises in the National Assembly on several criticized points of the “full employment” bill, supported by the government. Two measures particularly attracted attention and sparked an outcry from the left. Explanations.
15 hours per week of compulsory activities
The first, which was voted on on the morning of Thursday September 28, results from the adoption of an amendment tabled by LR deputy Philippe Juvin which should make it possible to impose a minimum of 15 hours per week of compulsory activities for beneficiaries of the RSA, with exceptions. Right-wing deputies pushed for this minimum to appear in the law, as the Senate voted for when examining the text at first reading. The government was initially reluctant to set a figure in stone, even if the new “engagement contract” it is defending is inspired by a system for 16-25 year olds setting 15 to 20 hours of compulsory activities. After discussions with LR, he finally supported the right’s amendment, adopted with 88 votes to 27.
The latter sets a minimum of 15 hours per week for RSA beneficiaries, while providing possible exceptions for single parents without childcare or for disabled people. It also specifies that the number of hours of activities – which are not “free work”, but “integration and training activities”, insists the government – can be reduced for “reasons linked to the situation individual of the person concerned. This solution “goes in the right direction” by setting 15 hours as an “objective”, estimated the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt.
The left castigated measures deemed “stigmatizing”. “In the Senate, you said that you were against the 3 p.m., now you have changed your mind,” communist Pierre Dharréville told the government. For the Insoumise Clémentine Autain, the text translates “the idea that those who are in the RSA are lazy people who must be put back to work”. The RN also opposed the obligation of 15 hours of activity, “neither desirable nor feasible”, because “it risks depriving many RSA beneficiaries of their rights” and “increasing precariousness” .
Under criticism from the left, deputies adopted Renaissance amendments specifying the methods of monitoring an effective search for work by job seekers and possible sanctions.
A new form of sanction
But it is another device which provokes the most criticism within the opposition. This Friday, the National Assembly validated a new principle of suspension of RSA rights in the event of a breach. With the support of the majority and the LRs, an article establishing this “suspension-remobilization”, as the presidential camp calls it, was voted by 38 votes to 30.
If the beneficiary complies with his obligations, he could however retroactively recover the lost sums. But he could only recover a maximum of three months of RSA payment, a ceiling added against the advice of the government during the examination of the bill in the Senate, but which it ultimately accepted.
There is already a sanction today “which consists of amputating the RSA of a household”, but in practice “this part is never returned”, affirmed the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt, defending the new system as a more gradual sanction than suspension without retroactive payment or pure and simple removal.
Far from being convinced, the left lambasted at length an article of “shame” which, by establishing a new type of sanction, would ultimately increase the number. “Everything shows that the sanction leads to the street and the exit from the system, it is factual,” insisted the socialist deputy Arthur Delaporte. For the president of the LFI group, Mathilde Panot, the measure goes against the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, which provides that signatory states must protect the child “against all forms of discrimination or sanctions motivated by legal situation (or) activities […] of his parents”.