Posted Jan 15, 2023, 5:57 PMUpdated on Jan 15, 2023 at 9:20 p.m.
A few days before the first demonstration against the pension reform, two visions clash. The government defends a “fair” reform, sparing the most modest, when its detractors assure that it will in particular penalize the French who started working very early by asking them to contribute at 44 years old.
The day after the presentation of the reform, the boss of the CFDT, Laurent Berger, castigated a reform “on the sole back of the workers […] and among these workers, those who are most concerned are the low-income workers”. “Anyone who started working very young […] he will have to make 44 years of contributions, where is the justice? “Lashed out for his part the boss of the Hauts-de-France region, Xavier Bertrand, on BFMTV last week. “What I’m asking is that someone who has made 43 years of contributions can leave at full rate, before age 64, that’s justice,” he said.
New threshold for workers under 18
In the political family of the elected, the new boss of the Republicans, Eric Ciotti, however, said he was in favor of the reform providing for an increase in the legal age from 62 to 64 years and an acceleration of the increase in the duration of contributions from 42 to 43 years old. But a dozen deputies are not ready to vote for the reform as it stands, indicates the “JDD”, in particular because of the fate reserved for those who entered working life young.
During the presentation of its project last Tuesday, the government however explained that it was improving the device for long careers, in particular by creating a specific treatment for those who started before the age of 18.
150,000 people affected by long careers
For the record, the long career system, created in 2003 and revised many times, now allows those who started working before the age of 16 or 20 to retire at full rate, 2 or 4 years before reaching retirement age. legal, subject to having earned a minimum number of terms, particularly at the start of their career. It now concerns nearly 150,000 people per year, or nearly 20% of retirements.
With the reform, people who have had “very long” careers will be able to leave earlier, from the age of 60, “subject to having contributed the required insurance period plus one year”, i.e. 44 years, indicated in particular the government. “If we went to 43 years, it would no longer be the same cost”, we argue on the side of Matignon. “We have a subject of budgetary equation. »
In any case, a person who started working at age 20 should be able to slow down at age 64, which is the legal retirement age. If the rules of the game do not change, a person who started at 20 and was born from 1973 will leave at 63 (given the Touraine reform increasing the required contribution period to 43).
“Half the way” asked the French
“In the reform today, this person will have to work until the age of 64, that is to say one year longer (than in the previous scenario), but I remind you that we are in a reform in which we ask the French to work two more years, “justified Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, questioned on Saturday on France Inter.
“For people who started working at age 20, we ask them half the way we ask all French people,” she summed up. “We are reducing the gaps”, for his part, defended the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt on Sunday, on France Inter in a program with franceinfo and Le Monde. “What we are doing means that those who start working early are not made to work longer than those who start working late and who will have to contribute at the age of 43 and often go beyond 64,” said he also added.
“We will see what Parliament proposes, I do not close the doors on principle”, however defended the Minister of Labor on Sunday. Like an opening on a difficult point to pass through the executive, on the eve of a necessarily tense week.