DIn his general policy speech on January 30, [le premier ministre] Gabriel Attal insisted on the need to stop the phenomenon of “smicardization”. If 17% of employees are today at the minimum wage level, let us remember that this phenomenon is not new and it is explained mechanically by the indexation of the minimum wage to inflation, which allows a relative maintenance of the minimum wage. purchasing power of the minimum wage. On the other hand, according to the direction of animation, research, studies and statistics [Dares] from the Ministry of Labor, changes in the real monthly basic salary show a drop in the purchasing power of employees above the minimum wage, of around 3% since the start of 2021. How can we explain such a situation?
It is appropriate to read recent developments with regard to the policies of flexibilisation and precariousness of work deployed by companies for several decades. Added to this is a movement of diversification and complexity of salary practices which is manifested, from the 1980s, by the rise of individualization then, from the 2000s, by the expansion of employee savings schemes. , today renamed “value sharing” in the public debate (profit-sharing, participation and company savings plan).
All of these developments have actually weakened the ability of unions to obtain significant wage increases during company collective bargaining, when they actually take place. According to Dares, only 10.6% of companies with ten or more employees, which employ 51% of employees, initiated negotiations on salaries and bonuses in 2021, and an agreement was reached in less than seven cases. on ten. The absence of negotiations is also frequently justified by the direct application of a sector agreement.
Windfall effects
While the public authorities exclude any possibility of indexing salaries to inflation, the preferred alternative, frequently mobilized in the past, consists of encouraging employers to pay bonuses partially or totally exempt from social contributions to maintain at least temporarily the purchasing power. This is how the government introduced, during the summer of 2022, the “value sharing bonus”, which replaced the “exceptional purchasing power bonus”, known as the “Macron bonus”, created at the end of 2018 in response to the “yellow vest” movement.
At the end of 2022, the government encouraged employer and union organizations to negotiate a national inter-professional agreement on “sharing value in companies”. Signed in February 2023 by employer and union stakeholders, with the exception of the CGT, and transposed into law at the end of November 2023, this text aims, among other things, to generalize employee savings schemes from 2024. Participation does not was until now not obligatory in small companies, unless they opted for the value sharing bonus.
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