More than one in seven French people who do not receive more than the minimum wage. And the situation may not be ready to change. In fact, in the last 18 months, the minimum wage has increased by almost 10% with the return of inflation. The net monthly minimum wage went from 1,230.60 euros to 1,353.07 euros.
Employees subscribing to Smic were entitled to a revaluation of 120 euros but this is not the case by any means for all employees who benefited from an average increase of 3.8% according to Dares. Mechanically, an increasing share of employees will find themselves with minimum wage when they did not in previous years.
“We are one of the countries where the minimum wage is one of the highest in Europe, but the average wage is one of the closest to the minimum wage in Europe,” Emmanuel Macron acknowledged last March. a bit desperate for some of our compatriots”.
To avoid this pitfall, employee unions and employer representatives meet to establish new salary scales and, in particular, minimums for branches. However, with the successive increases in the minimum wage, many branches are lagging behind.
“These increases increase the number of employees around the Smic, warns Thierry Pech, CEO of Terra Nova who published in 2022 a study on “lifetime smicards”. This causes unrest among employees and heightens hiring tensions.
According to the unions surveyed, of the 171 large professional branches with more than 5,000 employees in the country, 86 of them have minimum wages below the minimum wage. Since the last increase in the minimum wage on January 1, they have not yet updated their grids.
11 levels below Smic in rubber
If no employer can legally pay an employee below minimum wage, however, it will refer to the collective bargaining agreement to set pay for employees moving up the ladder. However, some branches are sometimes several levels below the minimum wage.
Currently, it is the branch of the rubber industries in chemistry that is furthest behind with no less than 11 levels below the minimum wage. Therefore, an employee in this branch can, in theory, move up 11 steps and remain at the minimum wage, without their employer being required to increase it.
Behind this extreme case, some branches have up to seven levels below the minimum wage. This is the case of the timber branch (construction of wooden structures) or leisure areas and amusement parks. Finally, others have five, such as the DIY branch or the poultry industry branch.
The social partners in these branches do not respect the law that obliges them to negotiate new minimum wages within 45 days of the last increase in the minimum wage. The last one having taken place on January 1, it has been 102 days since these grids have been negotiated for half of the large professional branches.
The government has foreseen sanctions in its summer 2022 “purchasing power” law for branches that do not respect the negotiation deadline. They can merge with another more virtuous branch.
For many trade unions and employer organizations, the expected penalty is disproportionate and inappropriate. This is also the reason why it has not been applied until now. Some unions, such as the CFDT, recommend sanctioning the affected branches, preventing companies from benefiting from exemptions from social charges for low wages.
Source: BFM TV
