A framework for dialogue between social partners, the professional branch brings together companies that share the same collective agreement. It guarantees its members a common set of rights and limits distortions of competition. At its level, the applicable minimum wages are defined according to qualifications and seniority. We speak of “conventional minima”.
These minima are at the heart of the debate on wages: if they do not increase when the minimum wage increases, this erases the hierarchy of the grid and those whose coefficients are exceeded by the minimum wage find themselves paid the legal minimum.
Over the past year, repeated rises in the minimum wage linked to inflation have got the better of the efficiency or the speed of negotiation in many branches. Thus, one hundred and seventeen of the one hundred and seventy-one branches of the general sector comprising more than five thousand employees presented, at the end of September, at least a minimum below the minimum wage, or more than 68% of the branches, according to the Ministry of Labor. Despite several revaluation agreements signed since January for some.
“This reveals the poor quality of negotiations and agreements in the branches concerned, which are often just patchwork to wedge the minima just above the minimum wage”estimates the national secretary of the CFDT Luc Mathieu.
Step up the pressure
A major job of restructuring the professional landscape has been undertaken since the labor law of 2016, then the ordinances of 2017 and the “professional future” law of 2018, in particular by authorizing the government to merge branches where collective bargaining is not dynamic enough and where the workforce is too low. The objective is to reduce their number to around two hundred, whereas we have been able to count up to nine hundred in the past, some of which only concern a handful of companies or employees.
The government cannot intervene directly in the minima of the branch, this question is exclusively the responsibility of the social partners. But he has given himself the means to reinforce the pressure in the law on purchasing power passed in August: this salary criterion is added to the reasons for attaching one branch to another. The Ministry of Labor will thus be able to target three scenarios: the branches which do not conclude agreements on wages, but only use employers’ recommendations, the branches which conclude agreements below the minimum wage and the branches which do not do not negotiate on salaries. The branch may be merged if it does not open negotiations within forty-five days of the passage of its minima under the minimum wage. It was three months ago.
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