“There is a flaw: an employee who abandons his position has access to more favorable compensation conditions than an employee who resigns. » Before the Assembly’s Social Affairs Committee, which is examining the bill on unemployment insurance, the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, said he was ready, on Tuesday, September 27, to toughen access to unemployment insurance. unemployment compensation in the event of job abandonment. This situation occurs when an employee no longer comes to work without justification and ends up being dismissed by his employer.
“We are open to these conditions being aligned” on those of resignations, he added, while an amendment from the Republicans (LR) was tabled in this direction, while ensuring “that employees who leave their job for security reasons are not penalized”.
Few exceptions allowing resigners to be compensated
Only a handful of exceptions allow resigning workers to receive unemployment. Among them, following a spouse involved 14,000 cases in 2021, according to the National Union for Employment in Industry and Commerce (Unédic). Since 2019, the possibility has also been open once every five years to those who have a professional project (12,000 cases in 2021).
To leave his job while being compensated, the employee can ask his employer for a conventional termination, but the latter is not forced to give it to him. In the absence of obtaining this termination, some employees therefore chose to abandon their post, which constitutes a dismissal for fault and therefore does not deprive them of their right to benefit from unemployment insurance.
If there are no statistics on these job abandonments, the LR deputies affirm in their amendment that “it is a phenomenon that is increasingly palpable in professional circles”. “The employee who wants to quit his job (…) to withdraw from the labor market while having the objective of maintaining an income will not resign but simply not return to work so that the employer, tired of the fight, proceeds to his dismissal “they say. “While the resigner is bound by a notice which allows the employer to organize itself, the phantom employee, by abandoning his position overnight, disrupts the smooth running of the company”they add.
To fight against recruitment tensions, Mr. Dussopt, on the other hand, was more reserved on the desire of certain deputies to harden access to unemployment for a CDD refusing a CDI. The Minister recalled that when an employee refuses a CDI offered under the same conditions as his CDD, then the precariousness bonus of 10% is not due by the employer, a provision unknown according to him.