CFDT-MEDEF agreement on unemployment insurance: a stab in the back of workers

The Minister of Labor of the Barnier government, Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, trusted unions and employers’ organizations on Wednesday, October 9. the task of finding 400 million euros in savings per year on unemployment insurance for a period of 3 years. The deal, which was finalized last night, was finally predicting almost 2.5 billion euros in savings in 4 years and 1.75 billion more every year from 2028.

In detail, the proposal agreed upon by employers’ groups and unions is broken down into three distinct parts.

It is intended firstly to support the increase in the retirement age by pushing back the minimum age at which the length of compensation will increase. Therefore, although unemployed workers had until now benefited from a compensation period that was extended to 22.5 months from the age of 53, they now have to wait until they are 55. Similarly, although ‘people aged 55 or over could benefit from a 27 month allowance, this will now only be open to people aged 57 or over, etc.

Secondly, the project intends to attack cross-border workers very hard, with the introduction of a special coefficient making it possible to reduce by around 40% the amount of allowances that seekers receive a worker whose previous job was at the border. Similarly, the project intends to prevent anyone from accepting a job in a foreign country after rejecting at least two job offers in France, regardless of the criterion of relevance or it is a wage gap and although many border regions are particularly affected. deindustrialization and high unemployment, such as the Lille or Lorraine region.

Finally, in a third part, the project intends to review the calculation of allowances and focus on a fixed calendar basis of 30 days per month, which would amount to subtracting 5 days per year of contributions from insurance beneficiaries, and 6 during leap years. A measure whose income alone is estimated at 240 million per year for the State.

The three employer groups present, Medef, CPME and U2P, said they were satisfied with the text, while the trade union groups have not yet signed it, but the CFDT and the CFTC have saying they are in favor of the dealhaving played a major role in development. For its part, FO announced that it wanted to discuss internally whether to sign separately for each of the three parts of the project, even though the main union has also played a major role in the discussions over the past three weeks. For its part, the CFE-CGC (the main “executives” union), which was also involved in the negotiations, announced that they were willing to sign the agreement, not because of opposition to the big cuts that were proposed there, but because he didn’t put in the end. of the reduction in unemployment benefits for high incomes. Finally, although it has already been announced that it will not sign the agreement and that it has announced openly, the CGT still participated in the negotiations, thus giving legitimacy to the discussion framework that was the government clearly defined.

If the agreement has not yet been included in the state budget, the government already has it ” Welcome », through the voice of his spokesperson Maud Bregeon: “ [cet accord] indicating that the way of the Prime Minister of the government is to leave room for social dialogue, to take time for debate, to take time for negotiation. It’s not easy, but it pays off “. And of course the government has reason to be very happy: the person who asked for “just” 1.2 billion euros in cuts has presented a plan that provides for double, from the hands of the organizations that led less than 2 years of the fight against pension reform.

For their part, these same groups, CFDT in the lead, are delighted with the return ” social communication » and take an active part in the austerity offensive, supporting a new stab at unemployment insurance. So the CFDT delegation explained yesterday afternoon “ it was necessary to bring this round of negotiation to a positive conclusion to show that social dialogue is the best way to deal with economic and social issues, and to show our ability to define general rules. “. A way to definitively close the series of retirements that saw the former management, Laurent Berger, forced by his base, to fight in the streets and through the strike.

Therefore the management of CFDT is happy to be again an interlocutor of the government. In fact, although Macron wanted to stop the “intermediate groups” since 2017, the CFDT has always been the most organized wing of the union leadership, going so far as to be rated as ” joint manager of the Ministry of Labour », as in the Labor law of 2016. A role that the 7 years of Macron’s government has violently weakened, to the extent that Laurent Berger has been harassed in recent years in the media because those in power are no longer looking for enough. For the CFDT bureaucracy, this agreement, which is part of the battle to return to “paritarianism”, opens up the opportunity to raise issues with the employers, while at the same time giving it the opportunity to be a privileged interlocutor of the government again. , which is leading a violent offensive against the entire world of work.

While the leaders of the union agree with the employers to support the fight against cruelty, there is an urgent need to denounce these vicious agreements that aim not only on the unemployed but also on the entire working world. Against a government that is preparing austerity, and employers that are preparing social carnage with 300,000 jobs at risk, the unions cannot fight and the activists of the CFDT, most of whom have been fighting for pensions, staying in place. Against the “social dialogue” which is synonymous with social regression, the workers’ movement must respond to the offensive of the government and employers. With the social crisis that is getting worse, we have to build a response plan, independent of the State and employers, to bring back the hardship and offense of the employers.