Less than a month to reach an agreement. Unions and employers’ organizations begin a new round of negotiations on Tuesday on unemployment insurance and senior employment rules, with the aim of reaching a conclusion before November 15. The five representative union organizations (CFDT, CGT, FO, CFE-CGC, CFTC) and the three business organizations (Medef, CPME, U2P) must debate starting at 1:00 p.m. at the headquarters of Unédic, which manages health insurance. unemployment.
These organizations will simultaneously lead discussions on rules for compensating jobseekers and on measures to promote employment of older people (an issue that is even more crucial since pension reform) during a series of meetings here in mid-September. November.
Since his general policy statement at the beginning of October, Prime Minister Michel Barnier returned control to the social partners on these two thorny issues. This decision had at the same time buried the unemployment insurance reform planned by the Attal government and unanimously denounced as “unfair” and “violent” by the unions.
440 million euros of savings
The social partners will not start from a blank page, but from an agreement concluded in November 2023. It has not been validated by the Government due to the lack of provisions on older people. Signed by the CFDT, FO, the CFTC and the employers’ organizations after difficult negotiations, the agreement provided, in particular, for an improvement in the conditions to be entitled to unemployment insurance (having worked for at least five months and not six during the last 24 months) and a reduction in business contributions from 4.05% to 4% of gross salary.
The signatories had anticipated in advance the volume of savings that would be made in terms of unemployment of older people: 440 million euros during the period 2024-2027.
These savings were to be achieved by raising the age thresholds entitling to a longer period of compensation by two years. But high-level negotiations collapsed in April. The social partners are getting back to work on unemployment insurance, but with a novelty: in a very restricted budgetary context, the Minister of Labor, Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, has asked them to seek an additional 400 million euros of savings per year.
The minister considered this week “very important” to link the unemployment insurance reform to the “French disease” of underemployment of the elderly, while France is at the bottom of the table with an employment rate of 60 to 64 years, twelve points below the European one. average. If they are less unemployed than average, older people have a harder time finding work and may have difficulty continuing to do certain hard jobs.
“From 60 years old without conditions”
In particular, unions and employers were invited to work to promote progressive retirement, currently not widespread in France (about 26,800 beneficiaries as of December 31, 2023, according to the National Old-Age Insurance Fund). On this issue, which was one of the reasons for the failure of the April debates, the number one of the CFDT Marylise Léon pleaded on Friday on France 2 for them to be accessible “from 60 years old without conditions.”
Her CGT counterpart, Sophie Binet, believes that “one of the central questions” is who will pay. The 400 million euros of additional savings requested could be used for this purpose, he explained to AFP, noting that “the concomitance of the sums raises questions.” He conditions his union’s signature on the elimination of the two-year change in age limits for seniors, “a double penalty” with the pension reform.
The tight trade schedule is related to the fact that unemployment insurance rules fall on October 31. By then a decree must be published that extends it until December 31 to give the necessary time for the approval of an agreement. “We are going to act quickly, we are in a quick negotiation,” said Marylise Léon, her CGT counterpart, admitting that “it will be a sporting matter.”
Source: BFM TV
