the negotiation focuses on seniors and cross-border workers

The social partners are slowly moving towards a compromise on unemployment insurance. And this, despite proposals from the management side which briefly strained the situation this week. Employer organizations and unions met on Friday, November 8, for a third and penultimate negotiating session which clarified certain positions.

On Wednesday, the employers decided to spice up the session with the presentation of a draft agreement in which it proposed in particular to toughen the conditions of compensation for intermittent workers in the entertainment industry by increasing the number of hours necessary to be compensated. Faced with the unanimous revolt of the unions, however, the employers quickly backed down on this point on Friday morning.

We can easily imagine that the government only moderately approved an idea that risked provoking a large-scale social movement. A few hundred workers gathered in the morning in front of the headquarters of Unédic – the joint body which manages unemployment insurance –, where the meeting took place, to protest against the employers' proposal.

Request from the Minister of Labor

Friday's discussions therefore continued on the other proposals of the draft “amendment to the agreement on unemployment insurance” signed on November 23, 2023 between employers and the CFDT, FO and the CFTC. A compromise that Gabriel Attal's government refused to validate in the spring of this year, but which serves as the basis for this new negotiation. The social partners must, however, honor a request from the Minister of Labor, Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, to take measures to “generate 400 million euros in additional savings annually”.

The draft agreement thus envisages reviewing the rules concerning cross-border workers – people residing in France, but having had employment in a neighboring country. The subject has been on the table for several weeks because the current provisions are expensive, in particular because they provide for calculating the benefit based on the remuneration received which is, in certain cases, much higher than in France, particularly for those who have worked in Switzerland or Luxembourg.

The text provides that the allowance of these employees will now be calculated according to a “coefficient taking into account differences in average salaries between the State of employment” and France. It is also proposed to set up specific monitoring of these people, with more intense support and taking into account French remuneration in job offers. “We are well aware that it is by combining all these levers that we can estimate that we will make savings in order to meet the minister’s request”observes the CFDT negotiator, Olivier Guivarch, who specifies that “responsibilities” must then “to be taken by the government”.

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