Despite heated debates on the possibility of lowering unemployment benefits during a period of employment upturn, the Chamber voted for the reform.
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L’National Assembly adopted Tuesday at first reading the bill initiating a new reform of unemployment insurance, by 303 votes against 249 and 11 abstentions, with the support of LR deputies. This text, carried by the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt, triggers the possibility of lowering unemployment benefits in periods of better employment and increasing them when unemployment is high. It will be debated by the Senate from October 25.
He initially plans to extend the current unemployment insurance rules, resulting from a hotly contested reform of Macron’s first five-year term. And it triggers the possibility, by decree, of modulating unemployment insurance so that it is “stricter when too many jobs are unfilled, more generous when unemployment is high”, in the words of Emmanuel Macron during presidential campaign. Such a reform is approved by a narrow majority of French people: 53% against 47%, according to an Odoxa poll for Challenges and BFM Business.
“At work, lazy people”
It is a question of “making sure to be more reactive, more incentive” to the resumption of employment, according to the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt, who carried the bill last week in the hemicycle. He undertook not to touch “the amount of compensation”, but the conditions of entry into the scheme (six months worked out of twenty-four today) and the duration of compensation could change. After a phase of consultation with the social partners from next week, the government will decide by decree on the form that this modulation of unemployment insurance will take, for entry into force at the start of 2023.
READ ALSORetirement, unemployment, apprenticeship… Olivier Dussopt unveils the reforms of the quinquennium
Left and RN pounded those prospects. It’s “at work, lazy people”: “this text expresses nothing more than your visceral hatred of those deprived of employment”, thundered Mathilde Panot (LFI), when the communist Pierre Dharréville took over the song from Bernard Lavilliers, “I would like to work again, work again”. Arthur Delaporte (PS) also criticized the government’s request for a “blank check”. For the RN group, Laure Lavalette judged that the bill presented “no measure allowing us to bring back sustainable employment” and carried “a new blow to the plane in our social protection system”.
Conversely, on behalf of the Renaissance deputies, Astrid Panosyan defended “a necessary, effective and fair text”, rejecting “the promoters of the right to laziness” on the left as the supporters of a “national preference” for the job on the far right. If the LR deputies approved the bill, it was out of a spirit of “responsibility”, underlined one of their own, Stéphane Viry, who “still awaits” a real reform of unemployment insurance in the face of shortages of labor in the construction industry or the hotel industry.
No “nasty surprises”
The government sees modulation as a first brick to achieve the objective of full employment in 2027, i.e. an unemployment rate of around 5% against 7.4% currently. At the end of these sometimes eventful back-to-school sessions, the rapporteur Marc Ferracci (Renaissance) was pleased that there had been no “nasty surprises”, despite sometimes close votes, and that the bill did not has not been “distorted”. With the approval of the Minister of Labour, the deputies voted for a “very differentiated application” of the modulation overseas, hardest hit by unemployment. By amendments Renaissance, MoDem, Horizons and LR, they decided that the “abandonments of post” will be assimilated to resignations, to limit access to unemployment insurance.
Another part of the bill plans to extend the validation of acquired experience (VAE) to “caregivers and family caregivers”, to facilitate their access to old age professions. The Assembly approved the creation of a “genuine public service” for VAE, which is still little used, in particular because of its complexity. A “one-stop shop” will be offered via a digital platform.