The government tightens unemployment insurance compensation rules “to move towards full employment”

The duration of compensation will be reduced to 15 months "under current conditions", that is to say if the unemployment rate remains below 9%, for unemployed people under 57 years old. And you will have to have worked 8 months over the last 20 months to be compensated, compared to 6 months over the last 24 months currently, specified the head of government.

These elements confirm the ideas given this week to the social partners by the Minister of Labor Catherine Vautrin.

Gabriel Attal specified that the government would issue a decree on July 1 so that the reform “could come into force on December 1.” Changing the compensation rules requires updating the information systems of France Travail (formerly Pôle Emploi) which cannot be done overnight.

The Prime Minister also confirmed the creation of a “senior employment bonus”.

Thanks to this measure "an unemployed senior who returns to a job that is less well paid than his previous job will be able to combine his new salary with his unemployment benefit" and "will thus regain his initial remuneration, for one year", explained Gabriel Attal. The unions had reported that salaries would thus be compensated up to 3.000 euros.

He also wanted to create a “senior index” and study the creation of a “senior permanent contract”.

The bonus malus system on short contracts, criticized by employers and today limited to seven sectors of activity, will be the subject of an examination on "the advisability of extending it according to the evaluation at to drive".

“I am instructing (the Minister of Labor) Catherine Vautrin to lead a consultation to identify the sectors which will be intended to enter this system and at what pace,” detailed the head of government.

Received by the Minister of Labor this week, Medef President Patrick Martin showed his "support for reform" while saying he was opposed to "a generalization or even a simple extension of the bonus malus".

“Criminal” reform for the CGT

Finally, the Prime Minister confirmed the addition of a new threshold to reduce the duration of compensation, already reduced by 25% since February 2023, even more if the unemployment rate falls below 6,5%. He did not specify by how much. The CGT had reported that this duration would be reduced in this case by an additional 15 percentage points, or 40%, which would bring it down to 12 months.

“To prepare for the economic rebound of 2025 that the forecasters are announcing to us, I hope that the rules will be even more incentive when growth picks up again and the unemployment rate decreases,” said Gabriel Attal.

For the Prime Minister, “it is not a reform of the economy, but of prosperity and activity”. “The gain will be measured by a greater number of French people who will work. And therefore more funding for our system,” he assured.

According to the Ministry of Labor, the government expects 3,6 billion euros in savings from the reform and projects an increase "by 90.000 in the number of people in employment".

Tightening the affiliation condition would alone generate 2,8 billion in savings, according to the CGT.

“It’s really an anti-young person measure,” reacted Denis Gravouil, the negotiator on unemployment insurance at the Montreuil central office, for whom the absence of a decision to extend the penalty bonus shows that “the government is totally aligned with the interests of employers.

Using the words used according to him by Sophie Binet before Catherine Vautrin, he judged that the reform was "criminal", citing studies on the health of the unemployed and those around them which show "the suicide rate of unemployed people at the end of their rights is twice as high as in the employed population.

“The objective is not the incentive, the return to employment, since there is no link with the fact of reducing rights to this point”, estimated for his part Olivier Guivarch of the CFDT.

For the negotiator of the first union, this “confirms that the objective was financial”. In government "they start from a sum that they have to find and they look at what measures can produce this reduction in spending fairly quickly" at the risk of "forcing certain people to take poor quality jobs, short contracts , to have multiple jobs" to get by.

Unemployment insurance: the bonus-malus, “political counterpart”, for the CPME

The planned extension of the bonus-malus system "is a political counterpart" to other unemployment insurance reform measures, considered Monday the secretary general of the CPME, Jean-Eudes du Mesnil du Buisson.

He was reacting on BFM Business to the measures to tighten access to compensation unveiled this weekend by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.

These include a reduced duration of compensation from 18 to 15 months, and the obligation to have worked 8 months over the last 20 months to be compensated, compared to 6 months over the last 24 months currently.

“We needed incentive measures to return to work, afterward, it’s not a revolution either, we remain one of the most generous systems in the world,” said the head of the CPME.

On the other hand, the Confederation of SMEs is up against the extension envisaged by Mr. Attal of the bonus-malus system, currently applied in seven sectors.

This adapts companies' unemployment contributions according to the duration of contracts signed, to encourage them to keep their employees longer.

This measure "was of absolutely no use", estimated Mr. du Mesnil du Buisson, who was concerned that the bonus-malus could now target the medico-social sector, in which certain difficult professions "have a turnover rate more important than elsewhere.

“If you penalize these companies, it will be even more difficult for them,” he argued, saying he had the impression that it was “a form of political quid pro quo” for the reform and “absolutely not a pragmatic measure.

Mr. du Mesnil du Buisson also considered "a good idea, but unfortunately halfway there" the measure aimed at allowing an unemployed senior finding a job less well paid than the previous one to receive an allowance for one year. supplementing the new salary to the extent of the old one.

What "would have been an incentive", according to him, would have been to eliminate unemployment contributions paid by the employer for seniors, on condition that they keep them until their retirement date.