The government has once again rewritten its reform of unemployment insurance. On Wednesday 12 May, he communicated to the social partners a draft decree which corrects certain provisions of another decree, dated 30 March, relating to the calculation of the allowance for job seekers. The text, revealed by The Parisian and the AEF press agency, aims to put an end to “Unintended effects” likely to penalize several categories of workers, including women on maternity leave and employees on partial unemployment. But there seems to be a catch: “We cannot rule out the risk that the [modification] proposed is regarded as contrary “ to the labor code, according to a note from the Unédic services, that The world was able to consult. Such a diagnosis is likely to reinforce the unions, hostile from the start to measures which, according to them, seek to save money at the expense of people deprived of work.
The draft decree complained of concerns beneficiaries of unemployment insurance whose employment contract had been suspended or who suffered a reduction in remuneration when they were in activity (sick leave, maternity leave, partial unemployment, therapeutic half-time , parental education leave, etc.). Initially, the reform planned to “neutralize” these periods during which the relationship between employee and employer is sealed off: in other words, they were not taken into account when determining entitlement to an allowance.
However, this rule poses a problem, being coupled with the new methods of calculating the daily reference wage (SJR), which serves as a basis for determining the level of the allowance: it has the consequence of disadvantaging people who have had their contract suspended or their income to drop, as shown by a recent Unédic study commissioned by Force Ouvrière. In this research, several typical cases have been scrutinized. In particular, the situation of an employee paid the minimum wage, who has experienced one month of sick leave, four months of maternity leave and another one month sick leave is considered: before the reform, her allowance would have amounted to nearly 931 euros per month; with the decree of March 30, it would drop to less than 458 euros and would be lower (by almost 200 euros) than that of a worker, also at the minimum wage, justifying a “Same period of employment”, but without having been arrested.
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