“In the period we know, 18 months to find a job is enough,” said the government spokesman on Tuesday about the tightening of the conditions for granting unemployment insurance announced the day before. “What we want is to tell people: the spirit of unemployment insurance is the spirit of the National Council of Resistance”, developed Olivier Véran on the set of CNews, convinced that “the logic” of the current reform is “guided” by that of the time.
“The state said there will be times when people cannot find work because the labor market will be too tight, so they will have to be insured so that they don’t lose all their income,” he explained. “It is normal that when the risk is high, the insurance is strong and when the risk is low, the insurance is a little less strong”, he argued.
An “unacceptable” decision for the unions
The government struck hard on Monday by announcing a 25% reduction in the duration of compensation for all job seekers opening rights from February 1, a decision deemed “unacceptable” by all unions. The unemployment rate is currently 7.3%. The reform provides that the duration of compensation returns to today’s level if the unemployment rate rises above 9% or increases by 0.8 points over a quarter.
Asked about Labor Minister Olivier Dussopt’s wish for “100,000 to 150,000 additional returns to work” in 2023 thanks to the reform, the government spokesperson estimated that it would be “a fairly direct mechanism in fact, you will see that there will be a fairly massive impact on the labor market because it is also a signal that we are sending”.
This reform “misleads the French on the real state of the economic health of the country: the factories have not returned, French agriculture is not better”, reacted for his part on France2 the deputy RN of the Somme Jean- Philippe Tanguy. He regretted that we make “the French believe that the unemployed today are mainly responsible for their situation”.
Dupont-Aignan recognizes “abuses”
On the other side of the political spectrum, the LFI deputy for Val d’Oise, Paul Vannier denounced the “violence” and “social humiliation” that the application of these measures will represent. “This decision, it will plunge millions of people, women, men, their children, into poverty (…) and it is deeply, therefore, unfair”, he declared at the microphone of RFI.
“This story, which consists in making believe that there would be a stock of jobs that nobody wants to fill, it is a lie and it is used to come and take rights from the unemployed”, still regretted the deputy.
For his part, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (DLF) expressed concern on Sud Radio about the “dramatic consequences” for the “over 55s”, while acknowledging that the reform “in itself can be explained because it there are sometimes abuses.