Senior Employment: Financial Penalties Intended For Companies That “Wouldn’t Play The Game”

The companies could incur economic sanctions if they do not achieve concrete progress in the employment of older employees, Labor Minister Olivier Dussopt warned this Saturday, while the Government already plans to impose the publication of an “index” on them.

“We can take into account that (…) some companies would not play the game so much that it would be necessary to be more coercive,” said Olivier Dussopt, who is leading the current pension reform project.

Obligation to vote on the text for companies with more than 1,000 employees

As part of this project, the government plans to require a large number of companies to publish an “older people index” that reflects where they stand in terms of employment of older people.

This measure would be mandatory immediately for groups with more than 1,000 employees, then from 2024 for those with more than 300 employees. The government is thinking of eventually extending this restriction to companies with more than 50 or 60 employees, a goal confirmed on Saturday by Olivier Dussopt without further details.

“Find a slightly more coercive way”

The measure foresees financially sanctioning the affected companies that do not publish this index, after they do not negotiate salaries on the subject. “(If) a company that must publish the index does not do so, there will be an economic sanction (…) of approximately 1% of the payroll,” the minister announced, while until now it was not clear the exact amount of the sanctions.

However, as currently worded, there is no penalty foreseen for a company that does not make real progress on the issue over the years. “In this case, if when we do the second measurement of the index, we see that there has been no progress or even worse that there is a deterioration, we have to find a way that is a little more coercive,” warned Olivier Dussopt.

The Medef and the CPME have denounced these possible sanctions for companies that have bad practices in hiring older people. “When a company hires apprentices, will it be penalized because it will lower its percentage of seniors? Is this a bad practice?” asked Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, president of Medef, in a tweet, whose organization opposes the establishment of a mandatory index on the percentage of older people in each company. “Yes, companies have to make an effort, but the index doesn’t work!” says Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux.