“Let’s do our job”, summed up unanimously the directors and union leaders. Last February, after months of negotiations, the social partners managed to reach an agreement, not without difficulty, on the distribution of value. His agreement was later unanimously accepted by the executive.
Since then, Elisabeth Borne has promised to transcribe it “fully and faithfully” into law. Likewise, the employers’ and trade union organizations did not imagine that the government was going to return to the charge on the issue, at the risk of weakening the compromise that they had finally managed to find.
The charge is the exceptional contribution requested this Thursday by Emmanuel Macron to companies with more than 500 employees that repurchase shares. These companies may have to pay double participation, profit sharing or bonuses to their employees. An announcement from the President of the Republic, but presented as a measure of social justice, which is going badly, also with the unions.
A measure in favor of employees of large groups
“If we sign this agreement it is because it allows great progress for the employees of small companies,” explains a senior official of Force Ouvrière. It obliges companies with 11 to 49 employees to establish a value sharing mechanism, when their profit exceeds 1% of their turnover for 3 years.
For this union leader, the exceptional contribution will favor, on the contrary, the employees of the large groups, who already benefit from many mechanisms of shared value.
We are not touching an agreement between social partners
Finally, the business organizations did not appreciate the government’s interference in this file either. “When an agreement has been reached with such a fierce struggle between the social partners, we do not touch it,” explains a CPME official.
As for the Medef, it does not take off: “Let the Government begin by transcribing our agreement. We are not going to return to the table, on an issue that we have just discussed.”
Source: BFM TV
