For the second time in less than two months, a very broad trade union front is speaking with one voice to challenge the government. On Friday, September 9, eight employee organizations and five youth defense movements issued a joint press release criticizing the unemployment insurance reform. It’s about a “simple answer” employment and training issues, write the signatories. Their text is much more virulent with regard to the executive power than that which they had made public, on July 12, about the purchasing power. A way to raise the tone, a few days before the launch of a consultation between the public authorities and the social partners on this transformation of the system of compensation for jobseekers.
This initiative follows a meeting held on Monday evening at the CFDT headquarters in Paris. The five representative confederations at the interprofessional level (CFDT, CFE-CGC, CFTC, CGT, Force Ouvrière) took part, as well as the FSU, Solidaires, the UNSA and organizations representing students and high school students (FAGE, FIDL, MNL, UNEF, Voix lycéenne).
Another approach is needed
The text criticizes the government’s plan which intends to modulate the rules of compensation, by tightening them when the economy is doing well and by making them more protective when the activity slumps. Such an approach, which implies that “unemployment is a choice, (…) is totally ineffective”in the eyes of the thirteen signatories. “Stigmatizing job seekers once again by reducing their rights to compensation is deeply unfair”, they add, alluding to the previous reform, decided in 2019 and having the effect of lowering the monthly amount of the allowance for some of those registered with Pôle emploi. The changes desired by the government risk “to accentuate the precariousness of young people in particular, while the unemployment rate for the latter has increased by 1.3 points” in the second trimester.
The intersyndicale disputes the arguments put forward to justify the reform, the purpose of which is to contribute to the reduction of labor shortages. If employers have been struggling to recruit for several months, “it’s first of all because they can’t find the qualifications and skills” wanted. The authors of the text point out that “it is also the proposed working or employment conditions that pose a problem” (wages too low, staggered hours, short contracts, difficult access to transport, etc.)
You have 29.65% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.