May 1st, lily of the valley and new money

After long months of negotiations and official and unofficial negotiations, the Government drew up an unprecedented social agreement at the last minute on the eve of the Labor Day celebrations, on 1^is May.

Unprecedented firstly by the timing, which cuts the lily of the valley from under the feet of those who were counting on pounding the cobblestones with vigor to claim any advances provided that they take place.

New in substance then, because it is not every day that an agreement is signed with union representatives and even less with concrete measures, in hard cash for Moroccan workers.

More than 4 million Moroccans will directly benefit from a salary increase, either as a civil servant up to a monthly net amount of 1,000 dirhams, or in the private sector through the announced tax revision. on income.

More than a potential political victory for the Government or for its balance sheet, this social agreement is a fair and deserved redistribution for all employees of public administrations, local authorities and public establishments of whom we increasingly demand that they follow the pace of a Morocco that is moving forward.

If this agreement is a wise investment in social peace, it is also the guaranteed triggering of a mechanism which will re-inject the money given into the real economy through consumption in particular.

What was recorded in this agreement is therefore a form of boost to numerous positive externalities. Workers and civil servants as well as their representatives, modest households and the middle class, the Government, the State, everyone, except perhaps the opposition, can be satisfied with the recent announcements.

The fact remains that what is looming on the horizon is much less consensual. The pension reform, which the Social Dialogue intends to tackle at the start of the school year for a version presented to Parliament in October, will require a much more muscular showdown, partly because the new system will suffer from the problems of the current one and because the cost will certainly be high to redress the situation.

See you at the start of the school year, in the absence of 1^is May, to take the real temperature of social dialogue. Hoping the good news from spring will keep the good intentions going well into the fall.

Zouhair Yata

Play