Wages in professional branches: the government will bring together the social partners

Labor Minister Olivier Dussopt will bring unions and employers together on July 7 to encourage professional branches to negotiate increases in low wages, against a backdrop of galloping inflation, he announced on Friday.

The government's objective is to avoid too great a "smicardisation" of salary grids in a number of sectors of activity deemed too high.

"We have a little more than 110 branches out of the 170 which have at least a theoretical level of remuneration lower than the Smic. There is a lot of work to update", declared Mr. Dussopt on Europe 1.

According to the latest figures from the ministry, on June 17, of the 171 branches followed by the general scheme covering more than 5.000 employees, 120 displayed a grid comprising at least one coefficient lower than the minimum wage in force.

Mr. Dussopt will meet "next week" the follow-up committee for branch wage negotiations, made up of the social partners, which "will also be an opportunity to say that the government is committed to ensuring that the law is respected".

Otherwise, the minister brandishes the threat of a merger of branches, "in a logic of reduction" of their number "which we have been pursuing for several years", he recalled.

The "automatic" revaluations of the Smic, which followed one another in October, January and May due to inflation, worsened the situation of certain salary grids left fallow for lack of regular negotiations. And a new rise in the minimum wage is looming in September.

"Each time the Smic is increased, there is a proven risk that the first levels of the branch minima will be below the Smic", explained the minister.

"This does not mean that employees are paid below the Smic, it is illegal", but that there is a "risk of having to wait several years of seniority to take off from the level of the Smic (which is commonly called the "smicardisation" of remuneration, editor's note), and therefore the branches are required to open negotiations on their minima".

Because of this low wages, "there are sectors that are losing their attractiveness", he underlined, taking the example of security and guarding.

"We are working on it a lot because, in view of the Olympic Games in Paris, there is a need to train and recruit a lot of security guards. In this sector, you have 300.000 people with professional cards and on these 300.000 people, more than a third no longer work there, that illustrates the problem of attractiveness,” he explained.