Excerpts from the interview with Yves Veyrier on LCI on November 30 in the program “Ça gives the tone”, presented by Marie-Aline Meliyi
Marie-Aline Meliyi : What do you say to Bruno Lemaire, who believes that pension reform is essential to compensate for the billions of euros spent because of the Covid-19 crisis?
Yves Veyrier (SG FO): It’s shocking because, once again, the feeling is that we want to make employees pay the cost of the health crisis devices, on their pension rights. And for generations to come, for once! We are told it’s hard to be 20 at the moment, but by adding it is you who will pay later because your pension rights will be more difficult to acquire and will be of lower level … stopped demanding that public aid be made conditional, that it be controlled and when the conditions are not met, that the offending companies be sanctioned. One of you said: There is a risk that systemic reform is slashed. But it is the systemic reform which made the lowering of the age to benefit from a correct retirement come “slack”. With this pivotal age, which was to go from 63 to 64, then 65. While we were assured that this systemic reform was intended neither to save money, nor to age!
M.-A. M. : Yes, but Bruno Lemaire shows the color: We need money, we must repay the debt of the Covid. Do we have a choice?
YV : One of the lawsuits we made against this systemic reform project was that the State would have the last word on the management of the pension system. He has already got his hands on Social Security in the area of health. He wants to get his hands on Unemployment Insurance. He would like to get his hands on Action Logement. Governments increasingly fall back on the management of social protection. However, action must be taken on an economy which produces employment, which guarantees employment for young people from the moment they enter working life until they retire. With real jobs! Second-line jobs, for example, deserve to be upgraded, to be placed at the center of economic recovery. If we succeeded in ensuring that everyone has the right to a real job, the problem of financing social security systems, and pensions in particular, would be greatly resolved.
M.-A. M. : When you hear this cacophony within the government, Élisabeth Borne giving one speech and Bruno Lemaire another, what do you think?
YV : I told the Prime Minister in July that our determination is intact on pensions. If this project were to return to the agenda, it would give rise to social conflict. At some point, wisdom and reason must prevail and the President of the Republic and the government must consider that the situation created by the health crisis, the fact that for two and a half years of consultations on this dossier they could neither explain nor a fortiori convince, lead them to put this project aside for good and to ensure that we return to a capacity to discuss social issues other than in the conflict.
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