A tripartite meeting on minimum wages. This Monday, Elisabeth Borne is organizing a social conference to renew dialogue between the government, unions and employers on the thorny issue of low wages. For this meeting – announced at the end of August by Emmanuel Macron following the meetings in Saint-Denis with the main leaders of the political parties – the Prime Minister took care to take care of the preparations. All week, she met almost all the unions (CFDT, CGT, FO, CFE-CGC, CFTC and Unsa) and the main employers’ organizations: Medef, CPME, U2P, FNSEA, Fesac and Udes.
On Monday, and with all these wonderful people, three main themes will be discussed: salary minimums, part-time work and short contracts, exemptions from contributions, activity bonus and reduction in remuneration. We take stock.
Salary minimums
Did you know ? In France, almost half of the professional sectors (80 out of 171 in September, according to the Ministry of Labor) offer salary scales below the minimum wage. This results in particular from the testosterone increase in the minimum wage, which has increased by more than 13.5% since January 2021. Faced with this, other low wages – which have no obligation to be increased despite a context of inflation – find themselves overwhelmed.
A situation which is not without consequences. Of course, companies are forced to pay at least the minimum wage – they therefore compensate the difference between the salary received and the legal minimum wage. But this leads to a reduction in salaries: even in the event of promotion and advancement in the salary scale, an employee will remain on the minimum wage.
A state of affairs that the government is determined to combat. Already, the number of branches offering salaries below the minimum wage has fallen since June (from 147 to 80). Élisabeth Borne could threaten to sanction companies offering these prices.
Part-time and short contracts
17.3% of employees in France (excluding Mayotte) work part-time in their main job, in 2022, according to Dares. In a France where wages are slipping in the face of inflation and are not keeping pace with price increases, short contracts make the French people even more precarious and fuel the purchasing power crisis. 74% of part-time employees have not chosen this type of contract, again according to Dares, and 85% are dissatisfied at work.
Same problem for short contracts. Since 2010, Dares has noted a sharp increase in contracts of less than a month, three-quarters of which are even less than ten days.
Exemption from contributions
Since 2016, to help employment, certain companies can be exempt from payroll taxes. Aid increasingly called into question, notably in a report published in September by Marc Ferracci, vice-president of the Renaissance group in the National Assembly and PS deputy Jérôme Guedj. If the exemption for salaries between 1 and 1.5 times the minimum wage “works and serves employment”, according to the report, aid for higher salaries – between 2.5 and 3.5 times the minimum wage – does not has little interest in hiring.
The smicardisation of France with the decline in wages does not help, however, either. For hourly remuneration less than or equal to 1.5 SMIC, the exemption is total. More French people on minimum wage means more public spending.