Three months after a first exceptional revaluation of 1.9%, unemployment benefits will be increased, Saturday 1er July, again by 1.9%. This increase was decided on Tuesday at a meeting of the board of directors of Unédic, the joint association co-directed by the social partners which manages the scheme.
This second boost of the year will concern 2.1 million beneficiaries – those who have been entitled to benefits for less than six months are excluded from the measure – and represents an effort of just under 300 million euros over a year. The increase aims to help job seekers cope with inflation, even if it does not compensate for the evolution of the price index (+ 4.5% over one year, according to the latest figures from the ‘Insee published on Friday).
Reason why, contrary to the revaluation of the 1er April, no union organization voted in favor of this rate. However, they did not vote against, which would have called into question the very principle of the increase, and therefore abstained. But all the unions denounce the weakness of the increase and the attitude of the employers during the negotiation.
“This totally insufficient revaluation was voted by the employers’ organizations alone, while all the employee organizations abstained, the vote against by a single trade union organization would have led to a non-revaluation of the allowances”, reacted the CGT in a press release. Although the unions did not all offer the same rate of increase, it was generally between 4.5% and a little over 5%, around the rate of inflation.
Inflexible position of employers
Prior to the board of directors, the employers’ organizations had announced that they would not consider a revaluation of more than 1.5%. Tuesday, during the meeting, the first proposal of the Medef was however at 1.9%. “We had a short moment of hope when we saw this first proposal because we thought that a second higher one would follow”, admits Olivier Guivarch, representative of the CFDT. An optimism quickly showered by the inflexible position of the employers, affirming that it would not go further.
The disagreement between social partners on this point is partly rooted in the exceptional revaluation of April. For the unions, the latter was only a catch-up for the previous year, judging that the increase in July 2022 (+ 2.9%) had not compensated for the acceleration in inflation. For the representatives of employers, on the other hand, it was only a down payment for 2023. They consider that the two improvements combined give “a reasonable rate of 3.9%, close to inflation”according to the vice-president (Medef) of Unédic, Jean-Eudes Tesson.
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