Six months after the failure of their negotiations on “life at work”, and while the government has given them back control over the rules for compensating job seekers, social actors think they can agree on mid-November, notably on an expansion of progressive retirements.
We sometimes come across, by chance while browsing the Internet, a meme extract from the video game GTA : San Andreas in which the hero, CJ, laconically exclaims: «Ah shit, here we go again.» Yes, here we go again. As if the last two years had only been a perpetual stutter, the main employers’ organizations (Medef, CPME, U2P) and unions (CFDT, CGT, FO, CFE-CGC and CFTC) are meeting this Tuesday, October 22 to discuss unemployment insurance and employment of seniors. A negotiation «flash», as the general secretary of the CFDT, Marylise Léon, says, supposed to end on November 14.
We hear some readers exclaim from here: “What, again? I don’t understand anything anymore.” It is true that there is reason to be lost given the twists and turns into which these subjects have gotten lost since pension reform arrived on the table at the start of 2023. So let’s summarize the double issue: on the one hand, it is a question of agreeing on the compensation rules which will prevail for job seekers from January 1, 2025, and, on the other hand, to find mechanisms to keep seniors in employment, when French companies have the unfortunate habit of massively pushing them out. What the postponement of the legal retirement age by two years, still fiercely fought for, has made all the more crucial.
The two issues have been embedded since the government of Elisabeth Borne imposed on social actors, when they renegotiated the rules of unemployment insurance a year ago, to shift the ages by two years (today 53 and 55 years) from which we benefit from longer compensation, therefore symmetrically to retirement age. A measure expected to generate 440 million euros in annual savings. Except that the unions signatories of the agreement reached in November 2023, CFDT in the lead, only considered this decline acceptable on the condition that companies make efforts to hire and especially retain the most experienced employees. The subject was therefore included in the negotiation program on a new “life at work pact”, which was going to start in the wake of that on unemployment insurance… only to finally fail in April. Gabriel Attal’s government jumped at the opportunity to bring out its own reform, terribly severe for those deprived of employment. Before suspending it in the face of the failure of the presidential camp in the legislative elections.
“We have no right not to succeed”
Four months later, the situation has changed. A new government is in charge, facing a National Assembly overwhelmingly hostile to the 2023 reform. Also the new Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, seems inclined to “change of method” already promised so much since Emmanuel Macron came to power. And this time, there is the idea in the air that it could be the right one. Frédéric Souillot, the general secretary of FO, is “very optimistic”. More sharp, Marylise Léon believes that“we don’t have the right not to succeed.” As for Medef, whose attitude had been widely criticized during the negotiations on life at work, its president Patrick Martin is ready to speak “career interviews, end-of-career permanent contracts and progressive retirements”. Finally, in government, the inevitable arbiter of elegance when it comes to incurring expenses, the Minister of Labor, Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, sees her role as follows: “I see us as facilitators.” Quite the opposite of the Attal team, accused by employers and some of the unions of having derailed the discussion on life at work by refusing, for example, to incur the slightest expense to support an expansion of progressive retirement. However, this is where the unblocking could come from today.
What are we talking about? The possibility given to an employee, two years before the legal retirement age, to reduce their working time by receiving part of their pension. Attractive system, but terribly under-exploited: barely 13,500 progressive retirements have been awarded in 2023a year at the end of which there were a total of 27,000 beneficiaries, or 0.2% of pensioners. The reason is simply summarized by Jean-François Foucard, of the CFE-CGC: “It doesn’t work, because you need the employer’s agreement.” For employees to really take ownership of it, say the unions, it should be made a right enforceable from the age of 60. The idea also appeared in a list of ten demands submitted to employers during the spring negotiations. And remains supported in these terms, in particular by the CFDT: “There are very high expectations from employees, it is an extremely important issue for us.” According to several sources, the government would be ready to make an effort of 300 million to 400 million euros, without us knowing how many new beneficiaries this would represent.
Red lines
An agreement on seniors would in any case make it possible to tie up the unemployment insurance issue once and for all. The November 2023 agreement serving as a basis for discussion, it would include measures such as the relaxation of the conditions for opening rights for seasonal workers and first-time registrants with France Travail. Employers will also try to preserve the reduction in contributions (-0.05 points) that they intended to grant themselves. As for the CGT and the CFE-CGC, they will recall the red lines which prevented them from signing in 2023. “There is no reason to transpose into unemployment insurance a pension reform that we are all fighting together,” recalls Denis Gravouil, confederal secretary of the CGT, on the subject of compensation rules for seniors.
The discussion also begins with a new government request: Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet wants social partners to generate 400 million euros in additional savings, which are also included by the government in the 2025 budget, discussed since Monday evening at the National Assembly. According to the Minister of Labor, efforts could be made to compensate cross-border workers, particularly those working in Switzerland. At this stage, the unions do not feel constrained by the request, formulated outside of any legal framework. And we don’t intend to satisfy her anymore. “The unemployed have already been largely contributed: 25 billion euros since 2021”, underlines Marylise Léon.
Source: www.liberation.fr
