Pensions, unemployment insurance, salaries: Panosyan expected at the turning point

Overview of upcoming topics and the state of relations, the day after the appointment of the new minister.

Unions, those unloved ones

"At work and at Work, with respect, with listening": Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet played the humility card in her first words as minister, on X.

But the union organisations have not forgotten anything: neither the lack of dialogue with the Elysée during the long mobilisation against the pension reform, nor the desire to get their hands on the supplementary pension reserve, nor the announced tightening of conditions for the unemployed.

Will we see a change of gear? Michel Barnier assured us when he arrived at Matignon: we must "respect and take into account the social partners". He is due to meet the unions soon, according to union sources.

The new Macronist Minister of Labor, who claims to have a social fibre, "has worked a lot on labor issues and has consulted us regularly, so she is someone well-known who knows how to work with social partners. That being said, everything will depend on the room for maneuver and budget that she will have", reacted the CFDT after her appointment.

For Cyril Chabanier (CFTC), his appointment is "good news for social dialogue" but also questions "his room for maneuver". He believes that his predecessor Catherine Vautrin was "listening" but regrets there was "no" final discussion on work.

The pension burden

The pension reform file, still highly contested, should fall to the new Minister of Labor. More than a year after the strong mobilization in the streets, the subject is far from being closed. An RN repeal text must be examined in the Assembly on October 31.

On Sunday evening Michel Barnier promised to "take the time to improve" the reform while "preserving the financial framework" of the law. The Prime Minister added that he would "trust the social partners to improve this law, to reform".

In 2022, Ms Panosyan expressed concern that the reform could lead to "social acceptability", believing in particular that the majority had "gone too far between 2017 and 2022 in its desire to simplify" the hardship criteria put in place during Hollande's five-year term.

In the union ranks, Marylise Léon (CFDT) is calling for "at the very least we suspend the reform" to discuss it again, while the CGT leader Sophie Binet only wants to hear talk of repeal: "Nothing is right in this reform, we cannot change it," she said on BFMTV on Sunday.

Tick ​​tock on unemployment insurance

Following the suspension of the unemployment insurance reform tightening the conditions of access and the rules of compensation, on the evening of the first round of the legislative elections, the rules currently in force were extended twice. They expire on October 31.

The new Minister of Labor will have to quickly resume. In the spring, she argued that the urgent thing was not to reform unemployment insurance but "to make jobs that are not attractive."

The unions had denounced "the most useless, unjust and violent reform ever seen". Some are asking to resume negotiations while others, as well as the Medef, want the agreement, negotiated in 2023 but not validated, to be applied.

"She had positioned herself against the unemployment insurance reform, I hope that she will be consistent (...) and that she will ensure that it is definitively buried," Sophie Binet stressed on Sunday.

“Living decently from your work”

In October 2023, the former Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, promised during a social conference to tackle the issue of "low wages" and "branches with minimum wages below the minimum wage" or to launch a High Council on Remuneration. Her successor, Gabriel Attal, promised to "de-micardize" France.

But this "achieved nothing!" laments Marylise Léon (CFDT).

A year ago, before the social conference, Ms Panosyan called for "putting on the table the issue of conditionality of aid to businesses", a strong demand from the unions. In July, she pleaded for a government that responds "to what the French have asked us", citing first and foremost the fact of "being able to live decently from one's work".

Salaries will be one of the topics at the heart of the first day of mobilization that the minister will experience, on October 1, with a call for demonstration already launched by the CGT and Solidaires.