Tribune. For several months, the reform of unemployment insurance has been the subject of heated debate. A new method of calculating unemployment benefits, now in force since 1er October, is at the center of these tensions. The previous system contradicted the principles of equity and efficiency: benefits should reflect contributions paid and unemployment insurance rules should not favor precarious contracts.
It resulted in a multitude of situations where the unemployment benefit was higher than the monthly income of the person when he was working. Thus, monthly income could more than double by stopping work and registering for unemployment. The reason for this was that the daily reference wage, used to calculate the daily allowance, only took into account the days under an employment contract.
Take the example of a person who had worked one week per month for two years by multiplying fixed-term employment contracts (CDD) by 35 hours per week. While this person had only worked seven days per month, his monthly allowance was equal to the daily allowance multiplied by the number of days in the month. This monthly allowance was thus almost three times higher than his past monthly income!
Precariousness financed by the community
A person who also worked 35 hours per month over the same period, but part-time under a permanent employment contract (CDI), was entitled to an allowance four times lower than that linked to CDD. These inequalities in treatment between people who had worked the same number of hours were widespread. Would you agree to receive the same pension after 40 years of work as someone who had held the same job only every fourth year?
Another ingredient fueling job insecurity was the way in which the so-called “reduced activity” system enabled job seekers to combine unemployment benefit and income from work. In this device, a person who worked the first fifteen days of the month and registered with Pôle emploi for the last fifteen days obtained an income almost as high as if he had worked every day of the month. And, by virtue of the “rechargeable rights” which make it possible to acquire new rights, this situation could continue almost indefinitely.
Logically, this system, combined with the absence of bonus-malus for employers, has led to precariousness financed by the community, that is to say ultimately by full-time employees. It has encouraged the explosion of employment contracts lasting less than one month: their number has doubled in fifteen years. It also considerably deteriorated the financial situation of the National Interprofessional Union for Employment in Industry and Commerce (Unedic), whose debt grew by 21 billion between 2010 and 2015, and continued to increase by 7 billion. from 2016 to 2019 when unemployment fell.
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