The government raises the tone with regard to the professional branches which are slow to adjust their scale of wages to take account of the evolution of the minimum wage. State services may carry out their “administrative merger” citing the lack of responsiveness they have shown.
This provision is included in the draft law on the preservation of purchasing power, to which The world had, in part, access. This is more of a precision brought to the regulatory arsenal than a revolution. But the measure clearly aims to put the sword in the kidneys of the employers’ organizations which show little eagerness to change their collective agreement.
Of the 171 branches followed by the Ministry of Labor, 120 displayed, in mid-June, a grid containing at least one coefficient of remuneration lower than the minimum wage. These situations of ” noncompliance “ are linked to the fact that the minimum wage has been raised three times since autumn 2021 – twice exceptionally to take account of the acceleration of inflation (once on the 1er October 2021 and the other on 1er may). Faced with these upward revisions in a relatively short period of time, the social partners in many sectors of activity have not been able to adapt the texts which govern remuneration in their field.
Branches encouraged to speed up negotiations
In the context of soaring prices, “the whole challenge for the branches is to succeed in negotiating quickly to reassess wages”, as indicated in the presentation sheet that accompanies the bill. And to add: “The economic situation therefore puts the branches under particular strain and forces them to review their pace of negotiation. »
To encourage them to do so, the government intends “pressing the lever of branch restructuring”. At the present time, the administration already has the possibility of ordering the merger of a branch which is distinguished by a “conventional life” reduced, that is to say which negotiates very few agreements and on a limited number of topics. But, as the law currently stands, “non-compliance with the minimum wage does not appear to be a sufficient criterion to authorize” the State to carry out this act of authority, according to the presentation sheet.
The bill therefore completes the legislation, by providing that “the low number of agreements guaranteeing conventional minima at the level of the minimum wage becomes an element characterizing the weakness of the conventional life of a branch”.