Promised by the government for the summer of 2023, the pension reform has been the subject of intense discussions between the social partners and the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, since the opening of the consultation in mid-October. After having addressed the issues of employment of the elderly, hard work and the combination of pensions, the stakeholders opened this week a second round of discussions around “equity and social justice” where the future of special diets.
What are special diets?
The special regimes constitute the fourth block of Social Security together with the general regime, the agrarian regime and the regime for self-employed and non-agricultural workers. They represent plans that cover certain categories of employees in the public or parapublic sector.
The definition of “special regime” is particularly vague, it is difficult to say how many there really are in France. If the Labor Code only recognizes ten, the Social Security Accounts Commission lists many more. Let us mention hastily the special regime for mines (CANSSM), the seamen (ENIM), the RATP, the Banque de France, the electricity and gas industries (CNIEG), the Paris Opera, the Autonomous Port of Strasbourg, the Comédie Française, the National Assembly, employees of the tobacco and matches industry, volunteer firefighters… These plans already include more than 700,000 direct pensioners.
The Social Security portal also includes officials of special regimes, that is, civil and military State agents and territorial and hospital officials. With this scope, this would bring the number of special regimes to 27 and their workforce to more than 5 million direct pensioners.
Each of the special regimes operates and is organized with its own rules. This is how some only cover the risk of old age, while others also cover the risks of illness, family, work accidents, etc. The main peculiarity of these schemes is that in most cases they allow the insured to leave before the legal age. They may also offer other advantages such as a shorter contribution period to obtain a full pension.
But these parameters are again different from one regime to another. As shown in a document from the Ministry of Labor revealed by the echoesthe average retirement age is 60 for employees covered by the electricity and gas industry scheme, 56.81 in the RATP, 48 for dancers at the Paris Opera, 57.2 for sailors , 61 years and 9 months at the Banque de France…
What is the government planning?
Unlike the (ultimately abandoned) 2019 reform, the government no longer intends to build a universal pension system into which all special regimes are absorbed. Some of these plans are still in the executive’s sights. In particular those for whom the deterioration in the number of contributors forces the State to put the pot in order to ensure financial balance. This is in particular the case of the special regime for the electricity and gas sectors “which has some 135,000 contributors” for “some 139,600 pensioners”, note the echoes.
In an interview with the business daily, Olivier Dussopt also cited the RATP and the Banque de France among plans set to disappear as part of the pension reform. “Furthermore, I have no doubt that the question of the regime of the National Assembly and the Senate will be addressed in the framework of the parliamentary debate”, the Minister of Labor specified.
Even so, the Government says that it wants to favor the “grandfather clause”, as was done with the SNCF, whose special regime has only been abolished for new entrants, and not for active agents. This means that the financial effects of the abolition of these special regimes will not be fully visible for many years.
“The calendar will have to be discussed with the affected companies,” continues Olivier Dussopt, adding that there is another issue on the table for debate: “to know if it is about removing access to their special regimes, which cover different social risks, or just the retirement affiliation.
On the contrary, some regimes should be exempt from the reform. This is the case of the civil servants regime with a pension calculation method that will always be based on the last six months, as opposed to the best 25 years of the general regime. In addition, “the regime of sailors will not be affected, in particular that of the dancers of the Paris Opera and the Comédie Française, for whom the retirement age is low because they are very exhausting individuals”, he has already pointed out. announced Olivier Dussopt.
What do the unions say?
Several RATP unions, electricians and gas workers have strongly denounced the Government’s announcement of the end of the special regimes for new agents in these sectors.
“The priority is that the employees can focus on the production tool and the restart of the units to ensure the passage of winter,” he added, noting that we are focusing on regimes that, “by the way, are not losses.” doing”. “Today it is inadmissible to touch on this issue of pension plans, especially in a period in which we must focus rather on energy sovereignty options, on the issue of purchasing power”, reacted Julien Lambert, secretary federal of the FNME.-CGT.
“If we attack our regimes, like all special regimes, it is very clear that the electricians and gas workers will not let it go without mobilizing, and the CGT will greatly support them,” added his CGT colleague Fabrice Coudour.
On the side of the RATP, where drivers can open pension rights from the age of 57, we see “particularly a new provocation” by the executive, according to Bertrand Hammache, general secretary of the CGT-RATP. “With all the limitations of the public service that we are aware of and that are not compensated by a lowering of the retirement age, we are not prepared to solve the problem of employment in the RATP”, he estimated, while Parisian public transport faces shortages of drivers.
Source: BFM TV
