The government is preparing to unveil its pension reform on Tuesday, January 10. The text will be examined by the Council of Ministers on January 23 but the unions, which meet on Tuesday night, plan to mobilize before that date, while on the left the Nupes hold a meeting on January 10 and 17 and that LFI manifested in the 21st
The bill must go through commission in the National Assembly as of January 30, and in the Chamber on February 6, for two weeks, according to parliamentary sources.
A a few days after the presentation of the pension reform, the COR (Pension Guidance Council) report published last September is brandished at all costs for the Government as well as those who oppose this reform. This report estimates that the pension system will present a deficit in the more or less long term that does not threaten its sustainability. Is there really an urgency to reform pensions?
• Initial age
This is the emblematic measure of the government project, supposedly to fill future imbalances in the pension system and unanimously criticized: the gradual raising of the legal retirement age by two or three years, that is, up to 64 or 65 years.
According to consistent sources interviewed by BFMTV, confirming information from the Parisianthe hint of a postponement of the starting age to 64 years, with a decrease at the rate of three months per year, is “the preferred hypothesis” by the government.
Emmanuel Macron wished during the presidential campaign that the legal age of departure be pushed back four months a year to 65 in 2031, an increase that could begin on October 1, 2023.
But other options are being considered, in particular the mixed formula to postpone the retirement age (for example to 64 years, as the Senate wants, with an increase of three months a year) together with an acceleration of the extension of the contribution period .
This would then increase to 43 years (172 quarters) before the 2035 horizon set by the 2014 Touraine reform, thanks to an increase in the minimum contribution period by one quarter every two years, or even every year.
The executive has promised not to go beyond the 43 annuities required to obtain the full rate. In addition, the postponement of the age of majority will not have an effect on the discount cancellation age, which will be set at 67 years. So women, whose careers are most often cut short, will have a full pension at the same age as today, the government argues.
The Government would also be willing to raise, during the parliamentary debate, the minimum pension to 1,200 euros for all retirees and not only for newcomers
• Special diets
In the RATP, as with the electricity and gas companies, the special regimes will be closed for new entrants, as is already the case in the SNCF. And these professions, as well as railway workers and civil servants (including those in the active category), will also have to leave two or three years later than today. A perspective that heralds a strong mobilization in these union strongholds.
The increase in the retirement age could, however, start a little later in these special regimes, because the Woerth reform of 2010, which has already raised it by two years, will not be fully effective there until 2024.
• Employment of older people
While the unions protest against the postponement of the retirement age, arguing that very few older people have a job (35.5% of 60-64 years, end of 2021), the government recognizes that the success of its reform depends on retention employment at the end of a career
To this end, it foresees that the quarters carried out in the framework of an accumulation of employment and retirement will be computed for the pension, but also that access to staggered retirement be facilitated and open to civil servants.
The executive also intends to avoid that a resumption of activity could result, for seniors, in a loss of remuneration. To do this, the government is considering a bonus that could arise as part of the unemployment insurance scheme implemented on January 1, 2024.
Finally, the government wants to create a senior index negotiated in each branch and published by companies with more than 50 employees, with a sanction for those who do not comply with this publicity obligation. This option arouses the hostility of businessmen.
• Long and arduous races
Under social justice measures, the executive plans to raise the minimum pension to 85% of the Smic for a full career: the unions demand that the measure also concern current pensioners, and not only new entrants.
The government also wants to allow those who started working young to leave earlier. The exit will always be anticipated in two years for those who have validated five quarters before the age of 20, and may be four years for those who have accumulated ten.
Regarding hardness, the reform could resume certain criteria abandoned in 2017 but wanted by the unions: carrying heavy loads, painful postures and mechanical vibrations.
Finally, the creation of conversion permits for beneficiaries of a professional prevention account (C2P) is studied, as well as the constitution of a burnout prevention fund for professions identified as difficult.
• Oppositions and Union Proposals
“If Emmanuel Macron wants to make her the mother of reforms (…) for us she will be the mother of battles,” warns the head of FO Frédéric Souillot, who is opposed to this reform like all union organizations and the majority of objections
The stumbling block remains the measurement of age. More than two thirds of the French (68%) are against deferral at age 64, according to a survey by Ifop-Fiducial.
The CFDT has proposals to increase the employment rate of the elderly that will offset the deficit. All the unions defend an increase in employer contributions, a path also mentioned by the High Commissioner for Planning François Bayrou, but rejected by the executive.
The head of the CGT Philippe Martínez is ironic about the “feat” of the executive uniting the unions in action for the first time in twelve years.
The unions argue that there are other sources of funding, starting with employment. The official projections attest to this: depending on whether the unemployment rate will be 4.5% (that is, the full employment that the executive points out) or 7% as today, the deficit will vary from 13,500 to 19,500 million at the end of the decade.
A better employment rate for the elderly “would solve part of the problem”, according to the number two of Unsa, Dominique Corona. Adding to the 56% of people aged 55 to 64 currently in employment “An additional 10% to 15% of seniors working, that’s 10 billion returning,” says CFTC leader Cyril Chabanier.
To further inflate the manna, the CGT demands “professional equality between women and men”, like Solidaires, which ensures that “it would contribute 14,000 million to pension funds.”
Source: BFM TV
