As part of its pension reform, the government plans to require a large proportion of companies to publish a “index seniorwhich testifies to the situation in which they find themselves in terms of employment of older workers.
Companies could incur financial penalties if they do not make concrete progress on the employment of older employees, the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, warned on Saturday, while the government is already planning to impose the publication of a “index». «We can have in mind that (…) some companies would not play the game so much that it would be necessary to be more coercive“, judged Olivier Dussopt, who carries the current pension reform project.
As part of this project, the government plans to require a large number of companies to publish a “index seniorwhich testifies to the situation in which they find themselves in terms of employment of older workers. This measure would be immediately mandatory for groups of more than 1,000 employees, then from 2024 for those of more than 300 employees. The government is thinking of eventually extending this constraint to companies with more than 50 or 60 employees, an objective confirmed on Saturday by Olivier Dussopt without further details.
Read alsoThe procrastination of the government on the “senior index”
The measure plans to financially penalize the companies concerned which do not publish this index, then which do not engage in wage negotiations on the subject. “(If) a company that must publish the index does not do so, there will be a financial penalty (…) of approximately 1% of the payroll“, announced the minister, while the exact amount of the penalties remained unclear until now.
“The index is not working!”
However, as the text currently stands, there is no sanction provided for a company that does not make real progress on the issue over the years. “In this case, if when we do the second index measurement, we see that there has been no progress or worse that there is a deterioration, we have to find a way that is a little more coercive.“warned Olivier Dussopt. Thursday evening on France 2, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne had already shown herself in favor of sanctions against companies that have “bad practices» with regard to the employment of seniors.
The two main French employers’ organizations do not hear it that way. “When a company hires apprentices, it will be penalized because its percentage of seniors will drop? Is this bad practice?asked in a tweet the president of Medef Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, whose organization is opposed to the establishment of a compulsory index on the percentage of seniors in each company.
«Yes, companies have to make efforts, but the index does not work!says Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux. “Putting SMEs under surveillance by brandishing the threat of sanctions would not solve the problem“A lower employment rate for seniors in France than in other European countries, for its part estimates the Confederation of SMEs (CPME) in a press release.