With the improvement of "small pensions", the taking into account of "long careers" or even the "senior index", the measures aimed at "preventing and repairing professional wear and tear" are part of the social compensation put forward by the executive to defend his project.
The professional prevention account (C2P) must be uncapped to allow employees exposed to one or more of the six risk factors listed by this C2P (night work, repetitive, 3x8, with noise, under extreme temperatures, in a hyperbaric environment) to accumulate more points.
Rights which make it possible to finance training, to go part-time or to validate up to eight quarters for early retirement: sometimes as early as 60 today, and therefore 62 if the legal retirement age is raised by two years in 2030.
The value of the point would be improved, which would make it possible to increase the rights to training or part-time work. And the C2P should find a fourth outlet with the creation of a retraining leave, which could tempt employees wishing to leave difficult jobs.
In addition, the thresholds for acquiring points would be lowered for night work (100 nights per year against 120 today) or in "successive alternating teams", in particular in 3x8 (30 nights against 50). This would open rights to 60.000 more people each year, according to the government.
The executive, on the other hand, refused to reinstate the three so-called "ergonomic" hardship factors (carrying heavy loads, painful postures, mechanical vibrations) excluded from the account in 2017.
These criteria are "extremely difficult to measure individually", argued the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt. No question, therefore, of satisfying the unanimous demand of the unions, which demanded their reinstatement, whereas on the contrary the employers did not want to hear about it.
"Gaz factory"
The stakes are not small because ergonomic risks, at the origin of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), "represent 90% of recognized occupational diseases", by the very admission of the impact study of the reform.
If these criteria are not taken into account in the C2P, "you will have to be sick to retire earlier", deplores Dominique Corona, deputy secretary general of Unsa.
Accused of inaction on ergonomic risks, the government defended itself by presenting specific measures.
First, a new "investment fund for the prevention of professional wear and tear", the Fipu, will be endowed with one billion euros over five years by the scheme for accidents at work and occupational diseases (AT-MP ), surplus branch of Social Security, in particular to finance training actions. Branch agreements will be supposed to identify the most exposed professions.
Then, individual monitoring will be put in place from the age of 45 for employees "whose state of health is impaired", according to the government. During a medical examination between the ages of 60 and 61, they will be informed of the possibility of benefiting from a pension for incapacity.
Public caregivers will have their own prevention fund, which will mobilize 100 million euros to deal with particularly high risks: in 2021, 12% of nurses, 18% of caregivers and 25% of qualified hospital service agents were sick at the time of liquidating their retirement.
The government meccano on hardship looks like "a gas plant", criticizes Pascale Coton, vice-president of the CFTC, who pleaded - in vain - for "a health record throughout professional life", in order to "to recognize rights more easily". The account is not there, alerts the union official, adding: "and as long as we remain on a legal age of 64, the account is even less there".