Parliament adopted on Thursday the amending finance bill for 2022, the second part of the legislative package aimed at protecting purchasing power, defended by the presidential majority.
Among the most controversial measures in this text is the monetization of reduced working time days (RTT). On the left, it is perceived as a tool for unraveling the 35 hours rather than a lever for a general increase in wages. In a column published in Sunday newspaperelected officials, experts and academics deplore “the end of the framework and collective guarantees of working time and the consecration of mutual agreement leaving the employee alone with the employer”. But what does this measure actually cover and who will it benefit?
What is the redemption of RTT days?
First proposed by the right by a series of amendments, the measure aims to allow employees to convert the days of recovery of unused working time into additional salary. The Republican (LR) deputies wanted “better reward work and merit and increase the net salaries of the French”, while helping businesses “maintain a high level of activity in the face of recruitment problems”.
To limit the measure in time, the presidential majority tabled, through the deputy La République en Marche (LRM) Marc Ferracci, an amendment which made it possible to limit the measure to RTTs acquired between 1is January 2022 and December 31, 2023. But during the joint joint committee, the senators managed to postpone this date until the end of 2025.
During this period, employees will be able to ask their company, whatever its size, to give up part or all of their RTT days. If he accepts, the employer must remunerate these days or half-days worked by applying “a salary increase at least equal to the rate of increase for the first overtime hour applicable in the company”, i.e. a minimum rate of 10% of salary. A ceiling is set at 7,500 euros per year.
This remuneration will also be tax-exempt, ie it will not be subject to contributions or income tax. This is the main novelty of the measure. Because if there were already ways to monetize the RTT, they provided for the payment of employer contributions and the amount paid was subject to tax.
Who is really concerned?
As a reminder, the RTT are rest days that are complementary and distinct from paid leave, provided for by the law of 1998 lowering the weekly working time from thirty-nine hours to thirty-five hours. The employee can benefit from it as soon as he works more than thirty-five hours per week if the collective agreement of his company provides for it. And beyond thirty-nine hours per week, the overtime worked is supposed to be paid as overtime. Currently, with some exceptions, in particular if the company has a “time savings account”these RTT days are lost for the employee if they are not taken during the year.
To be able to benefit from the reform, it is still necessary initially to have RTT. This scheme only concerns employees in the private sector who benefit from a scheme to reduce working hours. The 5.6 million civil servants are therefore excluded. And, not all employees are in the same boat. This is very often the case for executives, who have contracts based on a “day pass” : they must work a certain number of days, the rest is divided into holidays and RTT.
In 2015, a study by the Department of Research, Studies and Statistics (Dares) estimated that in companies with ten or more employees in the non-agricultural private sector, 13.3% of employees had working time work counted in the form of an annual lump sum in days involving RTT. This diet was “widespread among executives (47%) and not very developed among non-executives (3%)”.
Some sectors, such as trade, catering, hotels, transport rather pay their employees by the hour, and prefer to pay overtime rather than granting RTT. “If we take the example of catering, a very tight market, this operation avoids having to replace people who would be absent due to RTT”says labor lawyer Caroline André-Hesse.
The most recent data show that RTTs are very unevenly distributed. The latest Dares study to date, published in 2017, indicates that it is executives and higher intellectual professions who declare having the greatest number of days off and RTT per year (33 days per year on average) ahead of the professions. intermediaries (31 days), skilled employees (29 days), skilled workers (27 days) and finally employees and unskilled workers (26 days). They will therefore be the main beneficiaries of this measure.