“Defining a New Pact for Life at Work: Unions Meet with Government at Matignon”

Until now, President Macron has mainly listened to the bosses, favoring a supply-side policy in the hope of attracting investors and therefore job creators. Mission accomplished. The French territory is attracting more and more foreigners.

This was verified again yesterday at annual summit Choose France » where the leaders invited multiplied the promises of investments and hiring. Unemployment still concerns 7% of the active population, but it has been falling steadily since 2015. It is no longer a fear. Rather, it is labor shortages that have become a concern.

Favorable context for employees

After fifty years of anguish in a labor market that was unfavorable to them, they finally find some peace of mind and therefore some bargaining power with employers. The priority at the moment is wage increases. The return of inflation has brought the question back to the rank of priorities.

But it was well before the general rise in prices that the purchasing power of the French people deteriorated. The real estate boom has greatly contributed to this. In 1985, housing absorbed 20% of household purchasing power, today we are close to 30%. In tense areas, tourist regions, the problem has become so acute that employers looking for staff are building buildings to house them at a reasonable rent.

Link between low pay and job disenchantment ?

This lack of appetite – some speak outright of laziness – came to light after the pandemic. Lockdown has revealed a dual world of work. With on the one hand those who have protected jobs. They discover teleworking and experience it as progress when they have sufficiently large accommodation. And on the other side, the famous first in line, deprived of telework by the nature of their job and very poorly rewarded for their efforts, they often have the lowest salaries.

Unlike the period of Thirty glorious “, this post-war period which is the benchmark for radiant growth in the imagination of the French, work in the 21st century no longer allows a substantial improvement in the standard of living over the whole of one’s career, hence this great demotivation. It explains the massive rejection of pension reform. If the work no longer keeps its promises of socio-economic promotion, the idea of ​​spending two more years there is hardly convincing.

great tiredness

A phenomenon of rejection of work that is not supported by statistical data. In terms of activity rate, number of hours worked or productivity, the French are rather good students of the European class, even if French productivity has tended to fall since the pandemic. French employees feel a great fatigue, accumulated during these decades of mass unemployment. These decades of social plans, of factory closures which have totally destructured the world of work. The reindustrialization that begins is still too tenuous to reverse the trend.

In the meantime, it is now that unions and employers must explore new territories to define a more balanced pact between labor supply and demand. Difficulty, employment of seniors, four-day week: the unions have proposals to make on all these themes. To see if Elisabeth Borne is ready to hear them.