“The greatest stigma towards job seekers is to keep them in the job application. It’s the same for the RSA”, estimated Wednesday August 24 on franceinfo Olivier Dussopt, Minister of Labour, Full Employment and Integration. Unemployment insurance rules must take into account “account of the state of the labor market and the state of the economy”, according to the minister. From the end of the week, the government will continue consultation with the social partners on the unemployment insurance reform bill.
More incentive rules for returning to work when “the economy is doing well”
“When we are attached to the emancipation, dignity, autonomy of people, the best way to guarantee them is to allow the return or access to employment, access to an income and therefore to autonomy and emancipation”added the minister. Unemployment insurance rules were set in 2019 and “they were only implemented in 2021” because of the Covid, recalled Olivier Dussopt. “They end on November 1. So the text that I will present in a few weeks will allow the government to extend the rules as they exist today so that there is no break.”
The government’s goal is to “to ensure that when the economy is doing well, the rules are more incentive to return to work and that when the economy is not doing so well, the rules are more protective”. Olivier Dussopt “is quite convinced that a compromise path can be found” with the social partners. The Minister’s priority is “the return to employment of men and women who have been permanently away from it”.
Salaries: no “general revaluation”
Another important point is salaries. In many sectors there are recruitment problems, in particular due to the low level of salaries. “It is obviously an element of attractiveness and a certain number of decisions have been taken, in particular with revaluations as in the world of education, the medico-social sector. There are dialogues in the private sector and a a large number of branches have revised their salary scales and their contractual minimums upwards”assured Olivier Dussopt. “We do not believe in a general, automatic revaluation of all revaluations.”
“We don’t want to raise taxes, or increase the debt, so that means more work.”
Olivier Dussoptat franceinfo
Pension reform: the current system is “unbalanced”
Pensions will also be reformed. Emmanuel Macron is to convene the National Council for Refoundation on September 8. “Everyone agrees that the pension system as we know it today would benefit from being improved. This system is not very readable and economically unbalanced”, explained Olivier Dussopt. Pensions are strongly linked to full employment. “If more of us are working, more of us are contributing.”
Find the entire “8:30 am franceinfo” of Wednesday August 24, 2022: