The employers are sparing no effort to fill out the list of grievances, two months before the presidential election on April 10 and 24. After the Medef and the Union of industries and trades of metallurgy (UIMM), it is the Confederation of small and medium-sized enterprises (CPME) which lent itself to this exercise, Thursday, February 10. Its president, François Asselin, unveiled, during a press conference, proposals to defend this category of companies in which a little more than 6 million people work.
Unsurprisingly, its demands overlap, to a large extent, with those of other employers’ movements, even if the solutions advocated may differ in terms of methods. To stimulate investment, Mr. Asselin recommends a further reduction in production taxes – targeting local taxation.
The cost of labor is another central concern of the CPME: in its view, it should be reduced. With this in mind, exemptions from social security contributions should be reconsidered, in particular because they are insufficient or non-existent, with regard to the highest salaries: contributions should therefore be reduced to 3.5 smic, so that the hand – of qualified work is less expensive.
Raise the legal retirement age to 65
Deeming the level of compulsory deductions too high, the CPME suggests a slimming cure at the “public sphere”. Several options are put forward: reduction of 120,000 jobs in the administrations, limitation of access to the status of civil servant by reserving it to the field of the sovereign (justice, police, defence), pruning of the “territorial mille-feuille” by redistributing powers between local government levels, etc.
On the issue of purchasing power – ubiquitous for several months with runaway inflation – Mr. Asselin has one priority measure in mind: the increased use of overtime. To this end, there should be no employer contribution or tax from the 36and work hour. The employer leader is also calling for the sustainability of the “Macron bonus”, this gratuity exempt from tax and social security contributions which has been a great success since its introduction at the end of 2018.
It is, perhaps, on social protection that the CPME has the most explosive ideas. Like the Medef, it considers it essential to raise the legal retirement age to 65. But Mr. Asselin’s organization thinks it needs to go further by founding “a capitalization scheme (…) included in compulsory contributions”. Individuals could feed it voluntarily in order to build up rights solely for them in view of their old age, the sums drawn being the subject of investments on the markets. A pension fund would thus be created, the resources of which would be used to finance French companies and which would be intended to be managed by the social partners.
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