The government launches the unemployment insurance reform

by time news

The bill on unemployment insurance will be presented next week to the Council of Ministers for a discussion at the beginning of October in Parliament, confirmed the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, Tuesday morning August 30 during the back-to-school university of Medef.

A text that must fulfill two objectives. The first is to allow the government to extend the current compensation rules – resulting from the reform that definitively came into force at the end of last year – which expire at the end of October. “We need this legislative authorization or risk going back to the rules before 2019”, explained the minister.

“Being unemployed or on RSA is not a choice”

Above all, it is a question of implementing Emmanuel Macron’s campaign promise of a so-called “countercyclical” compensation system: “It will be a question of easing the rules of compensation when the economy is good and to better protect the unemployed when things are bad”summarized Olivier Dussopt.

For the minister, “we cannot have 7.4% unemployment and hear business leaders say they are having difficulty recruiting”. By compensating the unemployed less, the executive therefore hopes to push them to accept jobs that do not find takers.

“Even if we will always find one or two who do optimization, being unemployed or on RSA is not a choice: those who lose their jobs did not choose it”, replied the new secretary of Force Ouvrière, Frédéric Souillot. Even if he opposes the government, the trade unionist assures that he will negotiate. “We precisely hope that the government will give back control to the social partners on the subject, not that it decide everything itself”, he develops.

“There will be no full employment without good employment”

On the employers’ side, the president of Medef, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, admitted to journalists that “the very ambiguous joint system of unemployment insurance, this tripartism where the State holds a very significant part of the broomstick, no longer works”. He therefore wants a reform of the governance of the system.

But he supports the government on the evolution of the rules of compensation, clearly preferring that the political level decides on the matter. “We know that we will not have an agreement with the unions on this subject: starting to negotiate when we know that we will not succeed is not a good service to render social dialogue”, summarizes Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux.

As Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne explained on Monday, the government is not only relying on its unemployment reform to achieve the full employment wanted by Emmanuel Macron. “To get out of this culture of mass unemployment that has weighed on the country for decades, the key is the attractiveness of the professions”she insisted, calling for “a better quality of life at work” and to ” required ” salary negotiations. “There will be no full employment without good employment”, she hammered.

“Companies have responded”

“Companies responded, assures Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux. Salary per head has increased by 6% and the payroll in the private sector has increased by 11% since the start of the year: this is the consequence of job creations, but also of salary increases and the choice of those who resigned to take better paid jobs. »

“It should be remembered that not all companies can pass on the costs to their selling prices, warns, however, the president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) France, Alain Di Crescenzo. Two-thirds of them cannot and are cutting back on their margins to bear these costs, the first of these being wage increases. »

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