Employment of seniors: the government opens the door to more "coercive" measures

Could the executive strengthen its bill, in order to make it more restrictive in terms of employment of seniors? "But why not," government spokesman Olivier Véran replied on BFMTV on Sunday.

"You know that we are not on a coercive point-in-blank line, we tend to trust people. But if we have to put safeguards in place to ensure that seniors have their full place in the company...", he continued.

"It's still strong coffee that France is a country in which we would not recognize people who have expertise, experience, know-how and want to work on this ability to assert it. ", he added.

On Saturday evening, the Minister of Public Accounts Gabriel Attal for his part told Le Parisien that on this point the executive was "very open to proposals on incentives, retraining, and to look without taboo at coercive measures for companies. who would not play the game".

In its project unveiled on January 10, the government is first betting on a "senior index" intended to change the behavior of companies, but which leaves the unions largely doubtful, while the employment rate for 55-64 year olds is 56% in France, below the European average (60,5%).

This index "will make it possible to promote good practices and denounce bad ones", according to the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne. If the refusal to provide information will be sanctioned, no retaliation is planned for companies where the employment of seniors is not progressing, except for the reinforced obligation to negotiate a social agreement in order to improve the situation.

While the text must be presented Monday in the Council of Ministers, before arriving in the Assembly at the end of January, "it is precisely one of the aspects of the law on which we say: we are open to the proposals that parliamentarians could do”, insisted Mr. Véran.

The government spokesman also warned the "opposition groups" in the Assembly, calling on them to "let the parliamentarians debate".

“The democratic danger is if an opposition group decides to transform the National Assembly into a ZAD, that is to say to deprive the deputies of being able to examine, enrich, transform, amend this text of law”, has assured Mr. Véran.

He was referring to remarks by the national secretary of Europe Ecology-The Greens Marine Tondelier who had called for the Palais Bourbon to be transformed into a "zone to defend".

"It is certain that if there is a group that arrives and throws tens of thousands of amendments at you to prevent you from examining this text, then there, if you have 70.000 amendments, there would be 4 years of debate in Parliament, we would only do that in the country”, warned Mr. Véran again.

The executive has however chosen to bring this reform within an amending budget for Social Security (PLFSSR), which limits the debates to 20 days at first reading in the Assembly, committee and hemicycle included.