Olivier Dussopt, Macronist MP and former Minister of Labor, expressed his reservations on Thursday regarding a possible further reduction in the duration of compensation for the unemployed, calling instead for a “reform of the governance of unemployment insurance”. “If we wish to go further” and “reduce the duration of compensation”, this “must go through a new negotiation” with the social partners, recalled the former minister, who had a reform adopted at the end of 2022 allowing modulation the duration of compensation for the unemployed depending on the economic situation, before a decree tightening the rules in 2023.
“Maybe we have a priority” other
Currently “perhaps we have a priority, a more urgent, more structural reform to do, which is that of the governance of unemployment insurance”, he told the Assembly before the journalists’ association. parliamentarians (AJP). In his eyes, it is a “necessary subject”, because “the nature of the unemployment insurance system’s revenue has profoundly changed”, with an “ever increasing share of its revenue” coming from “taxation”. (CSG), which “raises the question” of the role of the State.
“Today when it comes to unemployment insurance, the State is a bit of the elephant in the room. The social partners are negotiating, the State is not at the negotiating table but the State has already addressed to the same social partners a framing letter”, underlined the Ardèche MP. Olivier Dussopt suggests a new governance with the referral to Parliament “at regular intervals every three or five years to vote on an orientation law”.
Towards a takeover of the State?
The Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, recently pleaded for a “definitive” takeover by the State of unemployment insurance, a position which made the unions jump. The unemployment insurance system is currently managed by Unédic, a joint organization. The social partners renegotiate the rules every two to three years to take into account changes in the labor market. The government has also repeatedly repeated its desire to “reopen the construction site” of unemployment insurance and to further tighten rights, after two controversial reforms in 2019 and 2023.
On Monday, the leaders of the five major trade union centers called for a new reform of unemployment insurance to be abandoned and to “stop the populist stigmatization of the unemployed”.