For Sophie Binet, Bruno Le Maire “it’s Robin Hood in reverse”

The general secretary of the CGT reacted this Thursday on franceinfo to the plan to reduce public spending planned by the Minister of the Economy.

Bruno Le Maire “it’s Robin Hood in reverse”quips the general secretary of the CGT, Sophie Binet, invited Thursday March 7 on franceinfo, “it’s taking from the poor to give to the rich, it’s cutting into public services and social spending to reduce taxes on big businesses and taxes on the richest”. The boss of the CGT notably reacted to the plan to reduce public spending announced by the Minister of the Economy, with 10 billion announced in 2024 and an additional 20 billion in 2025. Bruno Le Maire “is very poorly placed to teach us a lesson”she tackles, “because he has been at Bercy for seven years, and in seven years, France’s debt has increased by a third, by 800 billion.”

“Seniors are treated like Kleenex”

“The problem is that the government, out of ideology, refuses to look at the sectors in which we must take action: aid to businesses and what the richest earn”she explains, “our system is too generous for businesses, there are 200 billion each year that are given in aid, without compensation, to businesses. It’s a third of the state budget.” Sophie Binet points directly to the research tax credit, “which costs more than 7 billion each year, and on which we have no demonstrated effectiveness”.

With this in mind, it invites us to think about reducing VAT, “which is an unfair tax” and to “increase taxes on large companies and the richest, because more and more small companies pay more taxes than the largest, who spend their time optimizing and tax evading”.

The boss of the CGT particularly strongly criticized the measures announced in the new unemployment insurance reform, which is made “to steal money from employees and unemployed people”. The government wants to triple controls on beneficiaries, reduce the duration of compensation and align the conditions of compensation for seniors with the general system, in order to avoid the phenomenon of “Unédic pre-retirement”, which consists of dismissing a senior employee. and remains unemployed until retirement age. According to the government, this system would be used by seniors to stop working before retirement age.

“Seniors are treated like Kleenex and are fired by the thousands from companies”she fumes, “the government must stop waging this war on seniors, it’s scandalous”. She believes that this method is mainly used by companies, and not by employees. Must therefore “limit the possibilities of dismissing seniors, increase the cost of contractual terminations, invest in training and sanction companies that do not employ enough seniors” but “the government and employers refuse to examine” these proposals from the CGT.

The State must therefore put its hand into its wallet to help resolve the problem of employment of seniors, defends Sophie Binet “if there are no solidarity measures to allow small businesses to finance end-of-career arrangements, we will not be able to cope.”

She therefore advises the government, instead of tripling the controls, “to increase tax audits, because tax fraud amounts to almost 80 billion euros each year”while “fraud [à l’assurance chômage], it is around 0.4% of those deprived of employment. On the other hand, what we see is that there are a third of people who could be beneficiaries who do not assert their rights, because it is more and more complicated to find their way”After “six years of successive reforms”.