The final text does not create “any new rights for employees”, declared CFDT negotiator Yvan Ricordeau. After three months of negotiations between unions, employers and the government, the unions noted the failure of negotiations on the employment of seniors during the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, April 10.
“There is no new right, there is less destruction (of rights) than expected, but above all major shortcomings,” also pointed out FO representative Michel Beaugas, who reserved the position of his organization. “We are going to list the pluses and minuses: there will not be much more,” explained Denis Gravouil for the CGT. “The opinion that I am going to pass on to our bodies is not favorable,” added Eric Courpotin (CFTC), while Jean-François Foucard (CFE-CGC) said that he would propose to his governing body “to do not sign this agreement.
Several unions highlighted the fact that an employer openness to a right to progressive retirement could have changed the situation, but both Medef and the government argued that the measure was too expensive. “The employers did not want this negotiation from the start, they tried to turn it around” to better evacuate it, estimated Yvan Ricordeau. The CFDT’s support for the text was decisive in reaching a compromise.
Negative opinion from unions
FO and CFDT will meet their governing bodies on Wednesday and Thursday to formally decide whether or not to validate the agreement, but the negative statements from their negotiators leave little doubt that their decision will be negative. The fifth and final version of the text, which included very few substantive changes compared to the last two previous versions, was submitted by the employers to the unions late on Tuesday evening, without satisfying them.
Medef negotiator Hubert Mongon regretted that the unions stuck to their initial positions throughout the negotiations. He recalled that his organization had wanted to “ensure that it worked to increase the employment rate in the country”, by improving the quality of the working environment, while avoiding “professional disintegration”. According to him, the draft agreement submitted for signature responded “to a certain number of aspirations” of several unions.
This failure gives back control to the government over the future, which had nevertheless committed in the event of an agreement to transcribe the text into law, the stated aim of which was to increase the employment rate of seniors, lower in France than in most European countries.
As expected, the Universal Time Savings Account (Cetu), promoted by the CFDT, but rejected by Medef and CPME, was also absent from the final version of the text. Supposed to allow all workers to convert days of leave or rest not taken into remuneration or to retire early, it should however be the subject of a separate negotiation next week – possibly Tuesday – on the initiative of the Union of Local Businesses (U2P), the third employers’ organization which represents artisans, liberal professions and traders.
Tighten unemployment compensation
The meeting scheduled for Wednesday in the event of agreement at Unédic to sign an amendment on compensation for seniors, in the presence of the unions signatories to the unemployment insurance agreement last November (CFDT, FO and CFTC) and the three organizations employers is “postponed pending the final decision of the various parties”, according to the Medef representative. This signature was to pave the way for the validation of the joint agreement by the government.
But Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has already announced his desire to further tighten the conditions of compensation for the unemployed to, he justifies, further encourage them to return to work. The social partners should therefore receive a new framework letter in the spring to negotiate a new agreement, with savings for unemployment insurance, while the government seeks to find savings in order to reduce the public deficit.