Unions in force at Matignon, pensions in everyone's mind

After a meeting with the inter-union at the beginning of April which had turned short, Elisabeth Borne this time receives each of the five representative organizations, without a specific agenda.

The Prime Minister, regularly heckled by pans of opponents of the pension reform which raised the retirement age to 64, says she is "listening to the priorities" of trade unions and employers' organizations.

As she blows out her first candle at Matignon on Tuesday, receiving Monday a satisfaction from Emmanuel Macron for her action tinged with "strength, determination and courage", she will meet at the end of the afternoon with FO and the CFDT. Then Wednesday morning with the CFE-CGC and the CFTC, before the CGT in the afternoon.

"We will first talk to him about pensions, telling him that there is a new meeting at the National Assembly and that we must let this meeting happen", and then "we will tell him that he must repair" what it has "damaged a little in the world of work", said Tuesday morning Laurent Berger, number one of the CFDT, on France 2.

These meetings are part of the roadmap that Emmanuel Macron entrusted to Elisabeth Borne to relaunch the executive after the pension crisis.

The intersyndicale reiterated Monday in a press release its "determined" opposition to the reform, against which it is organizing a 14th day of strike and demonstrations on June 6, two days before the examination of a bill from the Liot group aimed at its repeal.

Messenger bag

Liot's text is the subject of intense reflection by majority groups, which weigh in particular the argument of "financial inadmissibility", in reference to the constitutional rule which states that a proposal from parliamentarians cannot degrade public finances.

Elisabeth Borne gathered on Sunday at Matignon to discuss the Renaissance, Horizons and MoDem groups, with the President of the Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet. Several ministers and leaders of the majority also spoke about it at the Elysée on Monday morning, according to a participant. The Majority Intergroup will unveil its strategy on Tuesday.

After the forceps adoption of the pension reform, the unions come with a bag full of demands and could raise the stakes.

In the context of inflation, they mainly hear about wages, and will repeat that they consider "unfair and brutal" the degressivity of unemployment benefits or the introduction of compulsory working hours against the payment of RSA (income minimum for people without resources, editor's note).

All the unions demand that public aid to companies be "conditioned" on social objectives, such as higher wages, and environmental ones.

The CFDT will plead for a suspension of the exemptions of contributions for the branches which have minima lower than the Smic. The CGT, which comes, in the words of its N.1 Sophie Binet to the Parisian "to make demands", "to negotiate, not to discuss", wants an indexation of wages on the rise in prices.

Autonomous

The employers' organizations, which will be received next week, would have preferred independent negotiations with the unions before seeing the government.

In addition to the employment of seniors or hardship, so many subjects rejected from the reform by the Constitutional Council, the Prime Minister intends to build with the social partners a "social agenda" for a "new pact for life at work".

A bill, "which will embed the result of the negotiations" between the unions and the employers, should be tabled at the end of the year or at the beginning of 2024, according to Matignon.

But despite the resumption of dialogue, "mistrust will remain extremely deep", warned Sophie Binet for whom "there will be no return to normal if this reform (pensions) is not abandoned".

"We will continue to say that the page is not turned" on pensions, but "we cannot not talk about inflation, purchasing power", explains to AFP the president of the CFTC Cyril Chabanier.