Be able to adjust benefits to the labor market: the National Assembly adopted on Tuesday at first reading the bill initiating a new reform of unemployment insurance, with the support of LR deputies but under criticism from the left and the RN. The vote for these “emergency measures” with a view to “full employment” was won by 303 votes against 249, with 11 abstentions. The text will be examined by the Senate from October 25.
The possibility of modulating unemployment insurance
He initially plans to extend the current unemployment insurance rules, resulting from a hotly contested reform of Macron’s first five-year term. And it triggers the possibility, by decree, of modulating unemployment insurance so that it is “stricter when too many jobs are unfilled, more generous when unemployment is high”, in the words of Emmanuel Macron during the presidential campaign.
Such a reform is approved by a narrow majority of French people: 53% against 47%, according to an Odoxa poll for Challenges and BFM Business. It is a question of “making sure to be more reactive, more incentive” to the resumption of employment, according to the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt, who carried the bill last week in the hemicycle. He undertook not to touch “the amount of compensation”, but the conditions of entry into the scheme (six months worked out of twenty-four today) and the duration of compensation could change.
Entry into force from 2023
After a phase of consultation with the social partners from next week, the government will decide by decree on the form that this modulation of unemployment insurance will take, for entry into force at the start of 2023. Left and RN have pounded these prospects. It’s “at work lazy people”: “this text expresses nothing more than your visceral hatred of those deprived of employment”, thundered Mathilde Panot (LFI), when the communist Pierre Dharréville took over Bernard’s song Lavilliers, “I would like to work again, work again”.
Arthur Delaporte (PS) also criticized the government’s request for a “blank check”. For the RN group, Laure Lavalette judged that the bill presented “no measure to bring back sustainable employment” and carried “a new blow to the plane in our social protection system”.
Conversely, on behalf of the Renaissance deputies, Astrid Panosyan defended “a necessary, effective and fair text”, rejecting “the promoters of the right to laziness” on the left as the supporters of a “national preference” for the job on the far right. If the LR deputies approved the bill, it was out of a spirit of “responsibility”, underlined one of their own, Stéphane Viry, who “still awaits” a real reform of unemployment insurance in the face of labor shortages -work in the construction industry or the hotel industry.
“Abandonments of post” assimilated to resignations
The government sees modulation as a first brick to achieve the objective of full employment in 2027, i.e. an unemployment rate of around 5% against 7.4% currently. At the end of these sometimes hectic back-to-school sessions, the rapporteur Marc Ferracci (Renaissance) was pleased that there had been no “nasty surprises”, despite sometimes close votes, and that the bill did not has not been “distorted”. With the approval of the Minister of Labour, the deputies voted for a “very differentiated application” of the modulation overseas, hardest hit by unemployment.
By amendments Renaissance, Modem, Horizons and LR, they decided that “abandonments of post” will be assimilated to resignations, to limit access to unemployment insurance. Another part of the bill plans to extend the validation of acquired experience (VAE) to “close caregivers and family caregivers”, to facilitate their access to old age professions. The Assembly approved the creation of a “true public service” of the VAE, still little used due in particular to its complexity. A “one-stop shop” will be offered via a digital platform.