Negotiations on short-term contracts: the bonus-malus system is back at the heart of the debates.

The employers' organizations (Medef, CPME and U2P) are "ready to consider an alternative system to the current bonus-malus system" "as long as we consider the same range of sectors as currently exists, (...) as long as (...) companies with fewer than 11 employees remain outside the system" and on the condition that there is no increase in company contributions, listed the Medef negotiator, Hubert Mongon.

A flagship promise of Emmanuel Macron in 2017, made a reality in 2019, this modulation of employers' unemployment contributions based on their use of short-term contracts in some sectors that make extensive use of them (transport, accommodation and catering, etc.) only concerns 15% of companies with 11 or more employees, according to Unédic.

Since the 2000s, short-term contracts (fixed-term contracts, fixed-term contracts for specific purposes, temporary work, etc.) have become the norm for hiring, and while their proportion has stabilized, they have become increasingly shorter. Furthermore, young people are overrepresented among the employees concerned.

At the start of negotiations, employers stated that their objective was to abolish the bonus-malus system, citing its administrative complexity and the additional costs it imposed on businesses. Unions, however, point to its ineffectiveness.

"I believe they're clever enough to be content with a bonus-malus system that doesn't work, (...) and especially to avoid having a bonus-malus system that works and would bring some money into unemployment insurance," FO negotiator Michel Beaugas pointed out regarding employers' organizations. "We have entire sectors that have made fixed-term contracts an economic model; we'll have to make them change their model," he believes.

The three employers' organizations also wish to discuss broader issues related to the "rigidities" of the labour market and mention, among other things, the easing of the conditions for renewing fixed-term contracts and the minimum weekly duration of 24 hours in the case of part-time work.

"There's no question of launching into an endless catalog of schemes" with the aim of "deregulating the labor market," asserted Yvan Ricordeau of the CFDT union, emphasizing that "the Medef (French employers' federation) currently has no alternative proposal to the bonus-malus system." The union wants, among other things, to expand the scope of the precarious employment bonus.

The CFTC would like to "improve" the bonus-malus system by linking it to the duration of the contract or by extending it to all professional sectors.

"If we can at least get the contracts to be less short and we can see some requalification processes, we may have made some progress," hoped Denis Gravouil of the CGT, saying he was counting more on employers' difficulties in recruiting than on their "philanthropy".

Several organizations have expressed concern about the risk that regulating short-term contracts will accelerate companies' use of self-employed workers.

Given the scale of the issues, the social partners postponed the date of the session intended to be conclusive from March 25 to April 9.

At the end of February, they reached an agreement - involving employers' organizations, CFDT, FO and CFTC - on shortening the duration of unemployment compensation following a negotiated termination.

Illustrative image of the article via Depositphotos.com.