Chronic. Laurent Berger has not yet won the game but he has won a heat. Called to vote on the pension reform, 46% of French people ask for the abandonment of the pivotal age, in the last Odoxa poll published on January 3. The pivotal age is the age measure the government plans to introduce in 2022, raising it to 64 in 2025 and balancing the pension system. It has also become a very political marker, the “symbol” of the dispute between Emmanuel Macron and the leader of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT), the one on which the final tug-of-war between the president and the unions will focus. reformists.
On December 31, 2019, the President of the Republic urged his government to seek ways to“A quick compromise” with those of the social partners who want to. He knows that he will have to give up on the “symbol” if he wants to win the CFDT and the National Union of Autonomous Unions (UNSA), but he especially does not want to lose face. Even if at the end of the negotiations, the Macron reform has a good chance of resembling that desired by the boss of the CFDT, it cannot bear the name of Laurent Berger. This is the case with the complex relations between the president and the trade unionist. There can only be one master, not two.
Nothing went as planned
The paradox is strange because, in essence, Macron and Berger share the same vision: they are both convinced that, in a deeply transformed labor market, the social protection system must be freed from the corporatism around which it s is built to focus on consolidating individual rights. The universal point pension plan is, in their eyes, the only one that will ensure a decent retirement for the younger generations and decent coverage for the most vulnerable.
Their reconciliation around the reform was advocated by a part of the majority, who found that the quinquennium had moved far too far to the right. It was symbolized by the presence, at the Elysee, alongside the president, of Philippe Grangeon, the influential special adviser, from the ranks of the CFDT. But nothing went as planned. For the deal to work, it would have been necessary that the distrust between the two characters be abolished. And even more, that the gap between social democracy and social liberalism, which had dug the grave of the previous five years, is closing. Neither wanted it.
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