Unemployment insurance: extension of the current rules at the Council of Ministers next week

First text on the menu of Parliament at the beginning of October, this bill plans to extend until the end of 2023 the current unemployment insurance agreement, resulting from the 2019 reform - applied due to the Covid and legal remedies since the fall of 2021 - which expires November 1.

But this text also paves the way for the future reform desired by the executive.

"This delay will make it possible to initiate the necessary consultations on the rules of compensation and on governance, the current organization of which no longer corresponds to the desired balance between the social partners, the State, Unédic and Pôle Emploi", underlines the bill, consulted by AFP.

"The bill will be presented to the Council of Ministers" and "we will seize the social partners immediately afterwards", declared Olivier Dussopt before the Medef summer school.

In particular, the government wants to modulate the compensation rules according to the employment situation.

"We are convinced that incentive rules must be put in place, it is quite unacceptable and even unbearable to still be at an unemployment rate of 7,4% and to have at the same time a unanimous return from the heads of companies on the difficulties of recruitment", repeated Mr. Dussopt.

According to him, "the question of the level of compensation is not necessarily the right one, it is rather the criteria for access to compensation at the full rate and the duration of compensation at the full rate which can be the keys. of discussing".

“This issue of criteria, we want the social partners to take up,” he added.

“Blocks on hiring”

If they are all opposed to this modulation of the rules, the unions are however in favor of social negotiation if the State leaves them real room for manoeuvre.

"Give us back your hand as quickly as possible," said the general secretary of Force Ouvrière, Frédéric Souillot, who took part in the meeting.

In Le Monde, the secretary general of the CFDT, Laurent Berger, says he is hostile to an adjustment of "allowances to job seekers according to the unemployment rate". "It doesn't make sense, it's pure ideology and it's ineffective," he attacks.

Mr. Berger would like "the organizations of employers and employees to be able to define the parameters of compensation again, without having to comply with a guidance document" produced by the State.

He wants them to be able to "discuss the support and training of job seekers" and "the solutions to be found to remove the obstacles to hiring - linked to the lack of housing, the absence of public transport community or child care issues".

It remains to be seen whether a negotiation will ultimately take place because the Medef, in favor of changing the compensation rules according to the economic situation, has already said it is convinced of its failure.

“Opening a negotiation will be useless since it will not succeed for lack of a diagnosis shared with the unions on the effect of the rules of compensation on the resumption of employment. It is legitimate for the State to regain control” , said Monday its president, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux.