Pensions, unemployment insurance, employment of seniors: three thorny issues pending

Pensions: the reform amended?

Will the issue of pension reform, which is still highly contested, be reopened by the Barnier government?

In his program as a candidate for the nomination of Les Républicains for the 2022 presidential election, Michel Barnier, a supporter of raising the retirement age to 65, promised that with him, there would be "no pension lower than the minimum wage for a full career."

While the 2023 reform provides for a gradual increase in the age to 64, the New Popular Front (NFP), like the RN, wants to return to 62. Socialist or centrist voices are instead arguing for a re-discuss of the parameters.

The Macronists and the right are calling for budgetary "seriousness": even with the reform, the Pensions Advisory Council (COR) predicts a deficit of 0,4 points of GDP in 2030.

Several unions, such as FO and its representative Michel Beaugas, are calling for the "repeal" of the flagship measure, but not necessarily its social counterparts, and for finding "new revenues" to finance the regime.

By the end of 2024, "840.000 people" will have already retired under the new rules, according to the director of the National Old Age Insurance Fund (CNAV) Renaud Villard. Some 685.000 have already benefited in 2023 from an increase in their "small pension" - the main "social measure" of the reform - and 1,1 million others, whose file is more complex to recalculate, will in turn be revalued this fall.

Unemployment insurance: "on hold"

What will happen to unemployed people receiving benefits after October 31? The reform tightening the conditions of access and the rules of compensation was suspended on the evening of the first round of the legislative elections and the current rules extended twice.

The unions had denounced "the most useless, most unjust and most violent reform ever seen."

An agreement had been negotiated by several unions with employers in the fall of 2023, but its validation depended on other discussions between social partners on the employment of seniors, which fell through in the spring.

"If, today, we still have a reform of unemployment insurance pending, it is because we want to pick the pockets of the unemployed to pay for other things," said CFDT Secretary General Marylise Léon on Franceinfo on Wednesday, who is advocating for the application of the agreement signed by the social partners last year.

At Medef, we are advocating a return to the 2023 agreement, and not "renegotiating something on which everyone agreed".

"We are asking for a hand to be given back to us" and for new negotiations to be opened, Michel Beaugas (FO) told AFP.

Which option will Michel Barnier choose? In 2021, he advocated for a systematic elimination of unemployment benefits "after two refusals of reasonable job offers", a measure that came into force this year for certain refusals of permanent contracts.

More generally, the new tenant of Matignon affirmed that he wanted "no more stowaways in our social system".

Employment of seniors: "unfinished business"

At the end of August, Medef president Patrick Martin proposed resuming the "unfinished" negotiations on the employment of seniors.

This negotiation for a "working life pact", intended to help keep seniors in employment, failed in April, after more than three months of laborious discussions.

"There is a lot of grist to the mill," we want to believe at Medef without specifying at this stage what the new proposals of the employers' organization could be, which wants to renegotiate within the framework of an "autonomous agenda", without government supervision.

On the union side, the idea of ​​reopening this debate is not received negatively, particularly by the CFDT.

But, says CGT negotiator Sandrine Mourey, the employers have "still torpedoed the negotiation a bit". "What new are they proposing?" asks the unionist, noting that they do not want "constraints on companies".

Jean-François Foucard (CFE-CGC) does not see "what would have fundamentally changed" the mind of the Medef: "they only want reductions in rights and to recover money", he says.

"We need to start over on a new basis, with of course a new retirement age which would not be 64 but 62," argues Michel Beaugas (FO). He wants to believe that in the absence of a majority in the National Assembly, "the context has changed", in a sense less favourable to the employers who "for seven years did not need to negotiate because even before asking, they were given".