some cosmetic touch-ups to hide the extent of the attack

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While the unemployment rate rose 7.8% in 2020 and layoffs multiply, Macron and Borne are leading a major offensive against the most precarious through the reform of unemployment insurance. The decree is expected to be published on April 1 and apply on July 1. This reform first attacks accessibility to unemployment (lengthening of the period of work to obtain rights) and the amount of allowances which will decrease sharply.

While the health crisis has so far led to around 800,000 jobs being suppressed or threatened, this decree is a terrible attack on dismissed workers and the most precarious, to such an extent that all the trade unions have affirmed in a press release. common on February 23 their “Deep disagreement” with measures that “Will weigh heavily on the daily lives of women and men who lose their [poste] ». A formal opposition to the project which had not however prevented them from continuing the “social dialogue” to the end, and which has so far not resulted in any significant battle plan, to build the balance of power vis-à-vis the government , in the street and in businesses.

However, the government is trying to defuse the anger that could explode around this new attack. Indeed, a few days before its publication, the latest version of the decree sent to employers ‘and unions’ organizations includes a few marginal modifications which primarily relate to cosmetic measures.

To try to justify this reform in a context of deep economic crisis, the decree will condition the accessibility to allowances and their degression to certain indicators: more than 2.7 million declarations of job offers other than temporary work in four months and the drop in the number of category A unemployed by 130,000 over six months. According to the Ministry of Labor, these indicators reflect a sustainable recovery in hiring. In the event of hard confinement, the reform would be frozen for six months.

But behind these few marginal amendments, there is above all the government’s desire to make the most precarious people pay for the crisis, by pushing through this reform at all costs, without modifying its structure. At the most, Borne and Macron seek to procrastinate so as not to be confronted with too much anger, since the effects of the reform will not be felt immediately, but the decree will be well published and applied at the latest in a few months.

As we wrote in a previous article, faced with this government determined to make the unemployed and workers pay for the crisis, it is indeed through struggle and the balance of power that it will be possible to defend our rights. This is why it is now a question of calling on the union leadership in order to demand a real mobilization plan, in the streets and in the workplaces, against the reform of unemployment insurance and dismissals. Like the call to demonstrate against unemployment and precariousness on Saturday, March 20, 2021 at the initiative of the national movement of the unemployed and precarious which must be a first point of support. It is about building the broadest possible front to build the grassroots response against Macron’s anti-social project, because it is not for the workers to pay for the crisis.

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