Make all workers work without pay for seven more hours per year to bail out Social Security? This is the shock measure adopted Wednesday evening by the Senate, which pleads for this “solidarity contribution” supposed to bring 2.5 billion euros each year to the autonomy sector.
After extensive debates within the framework of the Social Security budget for 2025, the upper house approved this measure by 216 votes to 119, which would be added to the “day of solidarity” already practiced and aimed at old age and disability.
The measure is not final at this stage, since it will be debated next week during a joint committee bringing together deputies and senators, responsible for finding a compromise on this text promised in 49.3 during its final passage to the National Assembly.
But the Upper Assembly and its majority alliance of right and center, valuable support of Michel Barnier's government, wanted to leave its mark on the flammable budgetary debates of the fall, while the government is seeking 60 billion euros to make up the deficit.
“We are not making this proposal lightly”, but “today, we must find ways” to “finance the old age wall, the residential shift and the transformation of our nursing homes”, insisted the senator centrist and general rapporteur of the social affairs committee Élisabeth Doineau.
“Attack on the working world”
The Senate text echoes the debate on the elimination of a public holiday, a long-standing senatorial proposal, but proposes a more “flexible” system, which leaves the hand to the social partners to decline the modalities of implementation (a day per year, “ten minutes per week”, “two minutes per day”…). In return for this “solidarity contribution through work”, employers would see their solidarity contribution rate for autonomy increase from 0.3% to 0.6%.
The left was indignant at the proposal, criticizing for example “a hell of an attack on the working world” according to communist senator Cathy Apourceau-Poly, who responded with a touch of sarcasm by proposing a “dividend solidarity day” to make shareholders contribute. In vain. “This risks putting more people on the streets in November and December,” added communist senator Céline Brulin.
The Minister of Public Accounts Laurent Saint-Martin considered that the reform should not be implemented in this way through an amendment. But “that this can be reworked with the social partners, I think that could be a good idea”, because it would be “hypocritical to reject this debate out of hand”, he added. If Prime Minister Michel Barnier had been “very reserved” about the proposal, the Minister of the Economy Antoine Armand had deemed it “interesting”.
At the heart of the examination of the Social Security budget, the Senate also gave its approval to a government measure targeting apprentices: the latter will now be partially subject to two social contributions (CSG and CRDS), for an estimated gain of 360 million euros per year. The upper house, however, limited the system to contracts signed from January 1, 2025.
