The government is already planning to impose on them the publication of an “index” and could further harden the tone. Companies could incur financial penalties if they do not make concrete progress on the employment of older employees, warned this Saturday the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt.
“We can have in mind that (…) some companies would not play the game so much that it would be necessary to be more coercive”, judged Olivier Dussopt, who carries the current pension reform project. As part of this project, the government plans to require a large number of companies to publish a “senior index” which reflects their situation in terms of employment of older people.
A measure in stages
This measure would be immediately mandatory for groups of more than 1,000 employees, then from 2024 for those of more than 300 employees. The government is thinking of eventually extending this constraint to companies with more than 50 or 60 employees, an objective confirmed on Saturday by Olivier Dussopt without further details.
The measure plans to financially penalize the companies concerned which do not publish this index, then which do not engage in wage negotiations on the subject.
“A slightly more coercive means”
“If a company which must publish the index does not do so, there will be a financial penalty (…) of approximately 1% of the payroll”, announced the minister, while the exact amount of the penalties remained blurry so far. However, as the text currently stands, there is no sanction provided for a company that does not make real progress on the issue over the years.
“In this case, if when we do the second index measurement, we see that there has been no progress or worse that there is a deterioration, we have to find a way that is a little more coercive. “warned Olivier Dussopt.