On the issue of pension reform, the executive has a social partner with him. The Medef indeed welcomed on Tuesday “the pragmatic and responsible decisions” taken by the government. The first French employers’ organization remains however “opposed to the principle of a senior index” which will oblige companies to publish the share of their older employees.
“Ensuring the future of this pillar of the country’s social model, while maintaining the purchasing power of active and retired people, necessarily leads to working longer,” said the Medef in a press release. “In this respect, the raising of the retirement age to 64, supplemented by an acceleration of the lengthening, already planned, of the contribution period, is essential”. On Twitter, the president of Medef, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, assured that “reforming pensions was necessary to guarantee balance in 2030”.
“Companies will play their role and are ready to mobilize for the employment of seniors”, further promises the organization, while rejecting a senior index. This “will be created on the place of employees at the end of their career. This index will be simple. It will be public. It will make it possible to promote good practices and denounce bad ones, ”announced Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on Tuesday, presenting the pension reform. This index must be implemented this year in companies with more than 1,000 employees and in 2024 in those with more than 300 employees.
But for the Medef, this index should be “constructed from indicators that can be controlled by companies (rate of access to training, number of mid-career medical visits, etc.) the terms of which would be negotiated by branch or by company.
The CPME calls “not to block the country”
The Confederation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (CPME) for its part considered that “working longer was a necessity” and called on “trade unions, which are perfectly legitimate to make their voices heard, not to block the country by penalizing companies “.
The Union of Local Businesses (U2P), which represents craftsmen and liberal professions, has announced its “adherence” to “responsibility” measures, stressing that the postponement of the legal age to 64 allows “d ‘put aside’ the increase in contributions and the reduction in pensions.
The more mixed UIMM
On the metallurgy side, if it welcomes a project which “goes in the right direction”, the UIMM, employers’ organization of the sector, warned against the “financial cost which the extension of the working life represents for companies “, a dimension that the government project does not “take into account”.
The UIMM cannot “admit that this reform entails additional costs for companies, in particular those in the industry which already suffer from a significant lag in competitiveness” and warns that it “will continue to monitor very closely” this reform.