Soaring energy prices, soaring food labels, fuel costs that remain high: in this fall plagued by inflation, claims around the high cost of living remain strong, and continue to keep the government on alert. After the strike in the refineries of TotalEnergies in October, which had caused shortages in the service stations and required recourse to the requisitioning of personnel, the day of union mobilization on Thursday, November 10 had as its watchword wage increases.
While the executive has already spent more than 100 billion euros to counter the effects of inflation (tariff shield, energy vouchers, etc.), the subject, which has refocused from purchasing power to remuneration itself, is prickly. Inflation is expected to exceed 5% over the year, while wages have only increased by 3.7% over one year, according to provisional data released Thursday by the Ministry of Labor. The only exceptions: social minima and the minimum wage – which has increased by almost 8% in one year – have been indexed to inflation. “The government has already acted in other areas: energy prices, revaluation of social minima, point of index for civil servants… But the pressure is mounting, it feels obliged to do something”summarizes the economist Philippe Martin, dean of the School of Public Affairs at Sciences Po.
In his interview on France 2, on October 26, Emmanuel Macron had firmly ruled out the possibility of indexing wages to inflation – a mechanism abandoned by France in 1983 and which raises fears of fueling a “price-wage loop” , in other words to throw oil on the inflationary fire. But the Head of State has put back into the debate a spring campaign promise: the employee dividend. ” When you suddenly have an increase in dividends for your shareholders, then the company must have a mechanism that is identical for employees “, he explained, while the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, regularly insists that it is up to companies to increase salaries, after the billions spent by the State during the Covid-19 crisis and since the start of the war in Ukraine.
“Consistent with Macronist ideology”
So far, the government has above all highlighted the mechanisms developed during the first five-year period to involve employees in the performance of companies: profit-sharing, the use of which was further relaxed in the purchasing power law this summer, profit-sharing (compulsory from 50 employees) and the tax-exempt “Macron bonus”. Renamed “value sharing bonus” since this summer and the tripling of its ceiling (from 2,000 to 6,000 euros that the employer can pay), the latter has seen its average amount increase from 550 to 710 euros and has already benefited 2.5 million employees this year, conveniently indicated Bercy this week.
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