Pending “D-Day” on June 6 and a day 14 of demonstrations against the pension reform, the unions will speak again this week with the Prime Minister, an opportunity for them to advance on the issues they consider to be a priority before a government that they consider “weakened”. The five representative unions – CFDT, CGT, FO, CFE-CGC, CFTC – will be received in Matignon as part of bilateral meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday. The employer organizations will be in turn next week.
“Even after these turbulent months, I remain convinced that more space must be given to negotiation and social dialogue,” Elisabeth Borne said Sunday in an interview with the JDD, saying that she is “listening to the priorities” of the union organizations . and employers. With union officials, “we never cut the thread,” she insists. Elisabeth Borne had launched these invitations without a “specific agenda” on May 5, a few days after presenting the roadmap for the “one hundred days” decreed by Emmanuel Macron to relaunch the Executive after the pension reform. Reform that was approved by Parliament and promulgated by the President of the Republic on April 14, without convincing the unions to lay down their arms.
Grand Jury LCI-RTL-Le Figaro, Sophie Binet, general secretary of the CGT, was firm: “What I will tell the Prime Minister is that there will be no return to normality if the reform is not abandoned.” “You can’t rule against your people,” she says. What she wants is to “discuss” “an alternative to this violent reform” that “steals two years of life from employees.”
“Extremely specific requests”
Sophie Binet specifies: “I will arrive on Wednesday with very specific requests.” She wants in particular “a reduction in working time, that’s why we use the 32 hours” (of weekly work). The number one of the CGT also wants to talk about salaries, asking for their indexation to prices, as well as the “conditionality of public aid” to companies that receive “200,000 million euros each year without social or environmental conditions.”
“It is no longer possible to multiply gifts” to companies, launched Sophie Binet. Conditioning public aid would constitute, according to her, a “great lever that would allow, for example, pressure companies to increase wages.” The leader of the CGT proposes that these aids be subject to validation by the staff representatives, who “would judge whether the social and environmental objectives are met.” “It is not possible to have public aid when you lay off, when you do not respect professional equality, when you exponentially increase dividends and CEO salaries and salaries stagnate,” said Sophie Binet.
“Billions of state-guaranteed loans”
He pointed a finger at Air France-KLM CEO Benjamin Smith, who “has just announced the tripling of his salary” while Air France “has received billions of state-guaranteed loans” and “was one of the first beneficiaries. of public aid Covid “. He also pointed to the French laboratory Sanofi” which has benefited from almost a billion tax credits for research (CIR) and which at the same time has halved its number of researchers “.
After a May 1 marked by the battle against the postponement of the legal retirement age, the unions announced a 14th day of strikes and demonstrations on June 6, two days before the examination in the Assembly of a bill from the Liot group intended to repeal the reform. Sophie Binet believes that “mistrust is total” and wants proof of this “Emmanuel Macron cannot take a trip without being received by a demonstration against the pension reform, like his ministers”.
Source: BFM TV
