Originally, there was a measure supposed to help cure a French disease: “smicardisation”, which saw at the beginning of 2024 nearly 14.6% of private sector employees earn the minimum wage, a rate still too high despite a decline compared to 2023 (17.3%). The fault in part, explained the French employers in particular, is a too rapid increase in the social security contributions that they must pay on salaries between the minimum wage and 1.6 minimum wage, which creates threshold effects. At the end of the review of the 2025 budget, there will perhaps still be these threshold effects, therefore potential wage stagnation, and as a bonus, while we're at it, seven additional hours of unpaid work for workers . “Work more to earn less” summarized the general secretary of the CGT, Sophie Binet, Tuesday November 19 on France 2. This is the examination of the social security financing bill (PLFSS) for 2025, currently in the hands of the right-wing majority Senate. .
Tuesday, November 19 in the evening, the senators adopted an amendment, coming from the social affairs committee and carried by its general rapporteur, the centrist Elisabeth Doineau (UDI), which significantly attenuates the effects of article 6 of the PLFSS carrying a revision of the millefeuille of exemptions from employer contributions (“reductions in charges”), in the vocabulary of the right). The four-point increase (in two years) in the contribution rate to the level of the minimum wage, an income almost exempt to date for the employer, was supposed to bring substantial revenue, but also be accompanied, in 2026, by a smoothing of exemptions from contributions between 1.3 and 1.9 minimum wage. Thus, employers would be encouraged to move their employees into these pay brackets.
The measure was directly inspired by the thick report submitted in October by the economists Antoine Bozio and Etienne Wasmer, with the (and notable) difference that they proposed to make this development at constant cost, while the government chose to extract additional revenue, of the order of 5 billion euros in 2025. Hence a unanimous revolt, coming in particular from employer sectors such as cleanliness, where a majority of employees (and especially female employees) are at minimum wage. But also coming from the “common base” on which the government of Michel Barnier is based, within which the Macronists in particular are fiercely opposed to any increase in the “cost of labor”. As a result, article 6 of the PLFSS was rejected in the National Assembly by a front uniting LR, the Macronists and the RN, who did not even propose any adjustments.
Middle lane
The senators proposed a middle path. They canceled the increase in contributions to the minimum wage, but partially offset it by strengthening the government measure on the highest salaries. Thus, exemptions from health contributions (called the “health band”), which currently expire at 2.5 minimum wage, would end at 2.1 minimum wage instead of 2.2 in the government project, and those on family contributions (the “family banner”) would end at 3.1 SMIC, instead of 3.5 SMIC according to current law and 3.2 SMIC in the project governmental.
In 2025, the senatorial measure would reduce the expected return by 1 billion euros, thus bringing it to 4 billion euros, argues the Social Affairs Committee. The compromise suits the government, which has issued an opinion “of wisdom”, Wednesday, November 20, the Minister of Labor, Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, still defended the philosophy of the measure on LCI, recalling that according to the scientific consensus, “the impact on employment is less” regarding exemptions on high salaries. A few days earlier, the Minister of the Budget, Laurent Saint-Martin, had said he was ready to accept that the return on the measure would be halved.
In the process, this Wednesday evening, the senators adopted another amendment, also from the social affairs committee and carried by Elisabeth Doineau, which provides “an increase of seven hours in the annual working hours, for full time, of people in employment, in the private sector as well as in public functions”. This unpaid increase in working time, offset by a doubling of employers' contribution to the autonomy branch (from 0.3% to 0.6% of the payroll), amounts concretely to doubling the “solidarity day” established in 2004, but without targeting a particular holiday. Unsurprisingly, the measure is rejected by the unions, the general secretary of the CFDT, Marylise Léon, denouncing in the World of “old recipes, old clichés that we have heard a thousand times, with the idea that companies are exhausted and that efforts must always fall on employees”.
Employers not enthusiastic about the seven hours of solidarity
Nor is it clearly supported by the employers. Medef limits itself to repeating its mantra according to which “we must increase the quantity of work to finance the social model”, but does not comment further, at this stage, on the means put on the table to achieve this, he says. More severe are the CPME and the U2P. In the event that it involves returning to a public holiday, “the question of opening schools is major”, estimates Eric Chevée, vice-president of the first. Michel Picon, the president of the second, does not see how the measure could be applied among the artisans and traders it represents. Remove RTT from employees? “In our companies, they hardly exist.” Ask them to work a few minutes more per week? “It’s only those who have never worked in a store or on a construction site who think it makes sense,” he adds. For him, in the end, there will only be a doubling of the contribution of companies to the autonomy branch.
Nothing that put off the centrist and right-wing senators, however, since they adopted the measure without hesitation, one of them, the centrist Michel Canevet, even proposing up to 18 hours of additional work. The government had however issued an unfavorable opinion, through the voice of Laurent Saint-Martin: “The question of working time is not a taboo and must be asked. Should this happen through an amendment to the PLFSS today? The government's position is no. That this can be worked on with the social partners, I think that could be a good idea.”
It remains to be seen what will remain of these two amendments in the text finally promulgated. This will be the challenge of the joint committee, made up of seven deputies and seven senators, which will be responsible for developing a text summarizing the positions of each chamber. In the meantime, for the moment, the examination of the PLFSS in the Senate is not to the advantage of employees.
