Purchasing power: the Assembly voted article 3 last night to facilitate profit-sharing in companies
The National Assembly voted on Tuesday evening to facilitate profit-sharing schemes in companies, a measure criticized by the New People’s Ecological and Social Union (Nupes), during the examination, still in slow motion, of the purchasing power bill. .
The debates dragged on on this third article, which mainly aims to promote profit-sharing (bonuses linked to company results) in companies with fewer than 50 employees. It was passed at first reading, by 288 votes to 90, before the bill was examined in the Senate.
The Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, praised a mechanism of “simplification” and of “facilitating” for the “value sharing” within the company. The interest is “still very little implemented” in companies with fewer than 50 employees, recalled Renaissance MP (ex-La République en Marche) Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet.
To develop it, the article allows for a profit-sharing scheme on “unilateral decision” of the heads of these small companies in the absence of staff representative institutions or in the event of failure of negotiations, when the company is not covered by an approved branch agreement providing for a profit-sharing scheme. The text also proposes more generally to extend the duration of profit-sharing agreements from three to five years.
“Rebellious” deputies, ecologists and communists rejected the article en bloc, demanding salary increases rather than bonuses. “It’s a complete decoy”a “subterfuge offered to bosses to avoid once again any real salary increase”, recalled the “rebellious” MP Aurélie Trouvou. The communist Pierre Dharréville saw there a “liberal logic” of deregulation.
“The salary will remain the same. How by earning more, an employee will be precarious? », replied the MoDem Erwan Balanant. At Horizons, also in the presidential majority, Vincent Thiébaut criticized the New Popular Ecological Social Union (Nupes, left-wing coalition) for its “total ignorance of the business world”. “We know the business world, but, unlike you, we talk more with the employees than with the bosses”, retorted the “rebellious” Antoine Léaument. On the right, the deputy Les Républicains (LR) Thibault Bazin judged, for his part, that the measure was going ” in the right direction “despite “brakes” persistent for small businesses.
There were still 389 amendments to be considered on this bill at the close of the session on Tuesday at midnight, with a schedule that may be further disrupted. A few spikes punctuated the end of the evening, including a reminder of the rules of the RN Jean-Philippe Tanguy, who accused the rapporteur Charlotte Parmentier-Lecocq (Renaissance) of“incompetence” and lack of listening. The latter immediately denounced the “goujaterie” by Mr. Tanguy.