Gabriel Attal’s comments on Wednesday evening did not go over with the social partners. The CGT thus described the Prime Minister’s announcement of a new reform of unemployment insurance as “unacceptable”, while the CFDT considered that this regime could not be a “budgetary adjustment variable”.
“It is unacceptable in method and in substance, the only thing announced by Gabriel Attal this evening is still hitting the precarious or the unemployed”, criticizes Denis Gravouil negotiator for the CGT in the negotiations on insurance unemployment. “There had already been reductions in rights for seniors in the last unemployment reform and we would still have to add reductions in rights for the precarious, degressions, shorter durations of compensation for everyone,” regrets- he.
The CFE-CGC denounces Attal’s “absolute cynicism”
CFDT number one Marylise Léon warns: “Be careful, the unemployment insurance system cannot be a state budgetary adjustment variable! “. “A new reform has been announced, this will not prevent us from completing the current negotiations and respecting our commitments, the CFDT will continue to push demands so that efforts are fairly distributed,” adds the leader of the first French union in a message sent to the press.
François Hommeril, president of the CFE-CGC, considers that Gabriel Attal’s announcement is “the characterization of what a populist speech is, that is to say ignoring the facts, defying reality without any state of mind “. “I am stunned by the tone, by the absolute cynicism of this speech which ignores what the situation of an unemployed person is: we are going to impose retaliatory measures on him as if he were responsible in part or in total for his situation. This is false,” he says.
The CFTC’s concern
The leader of the CFTC, Cyril Chabanier, says he is “very worried”. “Making it more difficult to access unemployment or lowering compensation is something that doesn’t work, it has never worked.” Michel Beaugas (FO) for his part denounces “a beautiful fable” from the Prime Minister “according to which it is unemployment insurance which prevents employers from hiring”.
Gabriel Attal announced on TF1 that he had asked the “Minister of Labor to prepare new negotiations” with a view to “a real, more comprehensive reform of unemployment insurance” this year, mentioning several possible avenues such as reducing the duration of compensation “of several months”. The head of government also mentioned the two other “tracks” for reforming unemployment insurance: namely touching on the minimum time one must have worked to benefit from unemployment – currently six months in the last two years – and the “unemployment benefit level”.