16 personalities denounce in a forum the monetization of RTT

“The Trojan horse of social regression.” Sixteen personalities, including environmentalists Yannick Jadot and Eric Piolle, denounce, in a column published on the evening of Saturday July 30 on the website of the Sunday newspaper, the possibility for companies to buy back RTT days from employees. This provision appears in an amendment adopted on July 22 in the Assembly as part of the first reading of the amending finance bill.

Like the left within the hemicycle, these 16 elected officials, experts or academics castigate a provision which “mainly serves to avoid dealing with the real subject of purchasing power: wage increases”. They believe that this measure, a proposal by LR deputies, “weakens social dialogue in companies and deals an unprecedented blow to 35 hours”.

The Reduced Working Time (RTT) system allocates days or half-days of rest to employees whose working time exceeds 35 hours per week, which currently disappear if they are not taken. Redemption is only possible by company or branch agreement or in specific cases.

These personalities, including union representatives from the CFE-CGC and the CFDT Cadres, see in the monetization of the RTT “a powerful lever for the employer, allowing him to refuse the allocation of rest days by arguing the payment of these, faced with an employee torn between his need for rest and the improvement of his purchasing power” . A “relative improvement, moreover, because offering to pay RTT increased to 10% rather than overtime increased to 25%, is to offer to ‘work a lot more to earn little'”they write.

Furthermore, “the ‘framed’ possibility of monetization is subject to contributions, thus contributing to the financing of social protection. The new provision exempts the employer from paying employer contributions, which weakens this financing”they point out.