Juliette Moreau Alvarez
modified to
11:25 a.m., November 20, 2022
“We are not going to compensate less, we are going to work on the maximum duration of compensation, making sure to keep floors”. Guest of the Grand Rendez-vous this Sunday on Europe 1 / CNews / Les Echos, the Minister of Labour, Full Employment and Integration Olivier Dussopt returns to the reform of unemployment insurance and ensures that the amount of compensation for unemployment will not budge. “Today, they are at around 57% of the previous salary. This is the European average”, explains the minister.
If the government wants to reduce the duration of compensation, it relies on studies. “They show that there are two periods during which the rate of return to work is the highest: immediately after registration for unemployment insurance, and immediately before the end of the rights. Between both, it drops a little, so we want to tighten this period”, specifies Olivier Dussopt.
More rigor when things are going well, more protection when things are going badly
This unemployment insurance reform is a way for the Minister of Labor to make up for a lack of manpower in shortage occupations. “Unemployment has fallen, it has gone from 9.5% to 7.3%, but it remains difficult to recruit in sectors in tension”. Among them, catering, hotels, but also trades in transport, metallurgy, sanitary or medico-social. “It is estimated that there are 400,000 job vacancies in France.” For Olivier Dussopt, this cannot be explained solely by the attractiveness of these professions. “It also goes through training, availability. It’s a project that we want to carry out with force.”
Thus, the minister wants to carry out a reform of unemployment insurance that responds to a “simple principle”: “When employment is going well, more incentive rules are needed, while maintaining protections of course. On the contrary, when employment is bad, the rules need to be more protective.” This was the case in 2020 during the Covid crisis, where the government extended the rights of job seekers, for example.
Towards a “more structural” reform
On Europe 1, the Minister for Full Employment welcomes the adoption of his reform in Parliament “without 49.3”. “We want to have a more structural reform. Parliament allows us to determine these rules until the end of 2023, when I will once again approach the social partners to ask them to open negotiations with the search for majority agreement.
New objective of the minister in Parliament now, the pension reform, for an application currently planned for the summer of 2023. Another “necessary” reform according to Olivier Dussopt, who supports a project built to “improve and balance the system” and “facilitate the gradual and less abrupt retirement of seniors.”