Unemployment insurance: Medef seeks to limit the government’s drain

2023-08-28 07:00:09

A few days before the start of negotiations for the next unemployment insurance agreement, the Medef approaches the deadline with a calculator as a compass. For the employers’ organization, the main stumbling block lies in the billions of euros that the State intends to drain from Unédic. A perspective included in the framework document sent by Matignon on August 1, which it opposes, like all the social partners elsewhere.

It is on the basis of this text that employers and unions will have to decide whether or not to enter into negotiations with mid-November as the deadline for concluding. The government has set the bar very high. Between a drain on revenue for apprenticeships (employer unemployment contributions and CSG) and an increase in its contribution to the employment service (Pôle emploi which will soon become France travail), no less than 12 billion euros will could be taken from the unemployment insurance scheme between 2023 and 2026.

“Never So Far”

Within the Medef, we point to “an ineptitude”, “a referral error”, “a measure against the current”, as a euphemism. Firstly, Unédic’s surpluses must be used first and foremost to deflate the regime’s 60 billion debt, an amount recorded at the end of 2022. Secondly, the financial framework imposed by Elisabeth Borne calls into question the autonomous joint system since the management of Unédic has been in the hands of the social partners since 1958.

“Never has a government gone so far”, laments one of the leaders of the organization, recalling that Emmanuel Macron had already weakened the building by replacing the employee unemployment contribution with a share of CSG. Determined to make its voice heard, the Medef has launched an alternative: since there are surpluses, let’s take the opportunity to lower the employer contribution (4.05% today), suggested its new president Patrick Martin, quoted by the AFP.

mood effect

The suggestion is above all a mood effect, in response to Bercy’s decision to spread out the abolition of the CVAE by 2027. It enters, moreover, in contradiction with the stated objective of debt reduction. It would, finally, only bristle the unions at the start of negotiations. It is therefore unlikely that it will go very far, the goal being rather to release as little as possible to the State.

The other employer concern relates to the mechanism for adjusting the employer rate based on its use of short-term employment contracts. The employers’ organization may denounce from the start an inefficient and unfair gas plant, but it comes up against a wall: this “bonus-malus” supposed to fight against job insecurity was sanctuarized by Emmanuel Macron during his first five-year term.

Conquered ground

For the rest, the Medef approaches the negotiation on conquered ground. The framework document offers very little leeway for the unions to challenge the reforms of the compensation rules initiated since 2021: tightening of the conditions for payment of benefits, degressivity after six months, variation of the duration of compensation depending on the economic situation, etc.

So many measures that befit employers. Their questioning would be all the more difficult since the framework document is clear: any new law (improvement of the seasonal workers’ scheme, for example, as pushed by FO) must not degrade the planned trajectory of Unédic’s surpluses. Clearly, any new expense must be offset by savings…