An agreement was reached on the evening of Thursday, November 14 to support the continued employment of the most experienced employees. It still needs to be validated by enough organizations, and needs to be transposed into law to fully apply. Another surprise agreement returns to the limitation of union mandates.
This was, according to the unions, the subject that should have been addressed before even considering any postponement of the legal retirement age. However, it has been more than a year since the reform ratifying the legal age of 64 came into force, and the employment of seniors has been in decline even though a consensus has been established around its insufficient rate in France (58.4% of people aged 55 to 64 were employed in 2023). The government, employers and unions had agreed to put the subject on the menu of an inter-professional negotiation on a “life at work pact”, but this failed last spring.
At the beginning of October, the new Minister of Labor, Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, gave stakeholders a new chance to move forward by asking them to resume discussions. And this time, the outcome should be positive, since the delegation of the CFDT, the leading union in France, will give a favorable opinion to this agreement before its authorities, which will decide on Thursday, November 21. Ditto for the CFTC, which finds it “balance”. The two unions, however, agree on the fact that there is nothing revolutionary about it, but “the CFDT never claimed that it would solve everything”, underlines Yvan Ricordeau, his number 2. Above all, we should not miss this opportunity to demonstrate that what we call social dialogue has lost none of its relevance, especially when the political game is going through a tumultuous phase. . So that Jean-François Foucard, the negotiator of the CFE-CGC, will deliver to the authorities of his union a favorable opinion on the agreement, even if he considers that the negotiation has “missed its main objective”. As for FO, it reserves its decision for an overall assessment, Monday November 18, of the balances resulting from this agreement but also that on unemployment insurance. More severe than the others, the CGT sees this “small but not big gains”.
Negotiations every three years in branches and certain companies
Among these «petits gains», one of the most concrete advances for employees is to be found in progressive retirement, a system currently under-exploited: barely 27,000 people benefited from it at the end of 2023. Its principle is attractive, since it allows an employee to move part-time by receiving retirement pension during non-working days. However, one of its limitations lies in the fact that it is necessary to have the anointing of one's employer. Also one of the objectives of the negotiations, on the union side, was to establish a “enforceable right” progressive retirement that can be activated from age 60, while this age is supposed to shift at the same rate as that of retirement after the 2023 reform. A demand rebutted by employers and the government of Gabriel Attal during negotiations on the “life at work pact”.
This time, Michel Barnier's government has indicated that it is ready to make some budgetary leeway to finance an expansion of progressive retirement. But the employers refuse the idea that it is “opposable”. The compromise found therefore consists of specifying that a refusal by the employer must be “justified by the incompatibility of the working time requested by the employee with the economic activity of the company”. “Employees will therefore have the right to be refused progressive retirement at age 60 rather than at age 62,” summarizes Sandrine Mourey, of the CGT. The agreement provides that a meeting of “last part of career”, in the two years preceding the age of 60, allows the subject of progressive retirement to be addressed in advance. Overall, we should not expect a revolution, especially since the system still provides that you must have contributed 150 quarters, or 37.5 years, to activate it.
Retirement imposed at full rate age
Other measures go in the direction of the union organizations, such as the obligation to negotiate every three years “on the employment and work of seniors” in professional sectors as well as in companies with at least 300 employees. The text also provides for a mid-career meeting following the medical examination already planned at age 45, allowing “address the adaptation or arrangement of missions and workstations, the prevention of situations of professional wear and tear, possible wishes for mobility or professional retraining”.
Opposite, the main employers' motto is called “experience enhancement contract”. Formerly known as “senior permanent contracts”, it appears in the final copy, on an experimental basis for five years, after the unions expressed numerous and serious reservations linked to its ultra-flexible nature for the employer. The principle is as follows: if a company hires a job seeker over 60 years old – or even 57 years old if a sector agreement provides for it – it can ask them to send a retirement insurance document. “mentioning the estimated date of obtaining” of the full rate. This will allow this same company, when this date comes, to automatically retire the employee, whereas current law does not provide for this possibility before the age of 70. A bonus demanded by employers, and in particular the Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises (CPME), is for its part postponed to 2027 and conditional on approval by the signatory organizations within the framework of a monitoring committee: it This is an exemption from the specific employer contribution due upon retirement, which represents 30% of the compensation paid to the employee. For this reason in particular, the CPME considers the measure devitalized, and suspends its decision on the entire agreement until its authorities take a position next week.
A surprise agreement on the limitation of union mandates
Once it has been validated by enough employers' and trade union organizations, the agreement will still have to be transposed into law to be fully applied. The same goes for another agreement that appeared by surprise in the evening: employers and unions have drafted a short text which plans to put an end to the limit of three consecutive union mandates in place since 2018. This limit is denounced by the unions , who see it as an obstacle to the work of staff representatives in companies where applications are rare, and a risk of discrimination for trade unionists who would be in the crosshairs of their employer. This is a very first breach in the work orders implemented by Emmanuel Macron after his accession to power. And of the last, warns Medef, which is attached to these reforms: “Don’t expect any further developments from us, there won’t be any”assures its leader, Hubert Mongon.
