“Bruno Le Maire knows nothing about it” and “turns things upside down”, denounces François Hommeril, of the CFE-CGC

The president of the CFE-CGC is co-signatory of a column published Monday on the website of the newspaper Le Monde calling on the government to abandon a new unemployment insurance reform

“Bruno Le Maire puts things backwards. He thinks that it is the unemployed who create unemployment, where everyone knows and understands that it is unemployment which creates the unemployed”, reacted Monday March 18 on franceinfo François Hommeril. The president of the CFE-CGC is a co-signatory, with four other union centers, of a column published Monday on the newspaper’s website The world calling on the government to abandon a new reform of unemployment insurance, believing that it is necessary “stop the populist stigmatization of the unemployed“. On France Inter on Monday, the Minister of the Economy said he was in favor of a reform of the duration of compensation for the unemployed. He pleaded for a reform on “the duration” and not sure “the amount of compensation”.

“Reforms for the sake of reforms”

François Hommeril denounces the “ideological will” of the government of “make reforms for the sake of reforms” without “never evaluate the impact of these reforms on the ground”. The president of the CFE-CGC believes that the government “ignores the studies that exist on the subject”. “The question of compensation schemes is being studied. And it has been proven that the level of compensation has almost no impact on the motivation of researchers to find a job.”

François Hommeril specifies that European studies “are all consistent” on “moral hazard, the level of demotivation that can exist among people who are looking for a job depending on the level of their compensation”. According to the trade unionist, this moral hazard “is very low in France, rather lower than the European average, while on average, in France, we are compensated a little better than the European average”. According to the boss of the CFE-CGC, “it has been shown that the level of compensation is unrelated to the level of motivation and ease or difficulty of finding a job”. François Hommeril criticizes the Minister of the Economy for governing “based on what he heard on Sunday morning in the bar where he usually goes for coffee.”

Bruno Le Maire pleads for reform on “the duration” without touching the amount, while Gabriel Attal is in favor of also tightening the amount of compensation. These nuances make François Hommeril say that the Minister of the Economy “knows nothing about it”. “He doesn’t know that any better than how to calculate the surface area of ​​a hectare.“The president of the CFE-CGC explains that “the level of compensation is a level necessary to maintain a sufficient standard of living to be able to devote oneself to 100% looking for a job”. He recalls that, “when you have to spend 80% of your time looking for a daily living, you have much less time to look for a job”. The trade unionist pleads for “the level of compensation has a relationship with the level of income we had when we were employed”.

“Bruno Le Maire ignores real life”

Regarding the duration of compensation, “it all depends on the qualifications you have and the mobility you have”argues François Hommeril. “When you find yourself unemployed and when you have a fairly good level of qualification, finding a job with the same level of qualification, with an approximately equivalent level of remuneration in the same area, it is not as easy as That.”

He finally judges that Bruno Le Maire “misrecognizes” the lives of the unemployed. “It’s not easy to cross France to look for a job. Because often, we are with family, we have a partner, he or she has a job, or we are separated and we have to assume alternating custody of the children .” “That’s real life. And Bruno Le Maire misunderstands this real life”insists François Hommeril.