Unemployment insurance, season II: the executive gives Wednesday in the Council of Ministers the kickoff of a new reform aimed at responding to recruitment difficulties by varying the conditions of compensation for the unemployed according to the economic situation, an idea categorically rejected by the unions.
First social reform of the second five-year term, this bill aims paradoxically initially to be able to extend the current rules of unemployment insurance. Coming from an already controversial reform of the first five-year term, they expire on October 31.
It is a question of avoiding any legal vacuum for the compensation of approximately 2.5 million job seekers and the application of the “bonus-malus” on the contributions of certain companies which make heavy use of short contracts.
Expected debates
More than the content of the text, which will be debated at the start of the return to parliament in October, it is the sequence that it triggers that is debating. The government will seize the social partners with a request for negotiation of a modulation of unemployment insurance so that it is, in the words of Emmanuel Macron, “stricter when too many jobs are unfilled, more generous when unemployment is high.
It is then up to the trade unions and employers’ organizations to open negotiations or not to agree on criteria – the unemployment rate for example, the upward or downward trend of which could determine the number of months of work required. to access compensation (currently 6 months out of the last 24) – or the duration thereof.
The executive insists, like the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt, that there is urgency because it is “unbearable to still be at an unemployment rate of 7.4% and to have in the same time a unanimous feedback from business leaders on recruitment difficulties”. It makes this reform one of the conditions for achieving the objective of full employment (unemployment of around 5%) in 2027.
Unions unite
According to the economist and Renaissance deputy (ex-LREM) Marc Ferracci, one of the instigators of the 2019 reform, “dozens of studies prove that the rules of unemployment insurance, in particular the duration and the eligibility thresholds, have an effect on the level of employment”, particularly for the most autonomous unemployed in their search. False, retort the unions for whom the difficulties of recruitment are primarily linked to training and the attractiveness of the professions (salaries, working conditions, mobility, etc.).
Meeting on Monday at the headquarters of the CFDT, the unions agreed on their opposition to negotiating such a “countercyclical” measure and should publish a joint text to this effect next week. It will focus “on the current problem of employment and recruitment difficulties which will not find an effective response with a reform which further reduces the rights of the unemployed”, specified Marylise Léon (CFDT).
“We want to negotiate a new unemployment insurance agreement, but on condition that we are left in control”, adds Michel Beaugas (FO). “The reality is that the executive gives guarantees to the Medef, which therefore has no interest in negotiating with the unions”, deplores François Hommeril (CFE-CGC).
Mass has been said ?
In fact, the president of Medef, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, has already judged that “opening negotiations will be useless since it will not succeed for lack of a diagnosis shared with the unions”. From then on the mass seems to have been said. Without an agreement, the government will define the rules by decree alone. He wants implementation “before the end of the year” according to Mr. Dussopt.
The government intends to open another consultation within a few months on the governance of Unédic, the joint unemployment insurance scheme, in connection with the reform of RSA support and the creation of France Travail, which is to succeed at Pôle emploi and better coordinate the players involved in employment.