The president of Medef, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, was the guest of 8:30 a.m. franceinfo Wednesday June 1. He answered questions from Marc Fauvelle and Salhia Brakhlia.
Labor shortage: “Wages will be reviewed”
“I don’t have a red button or a green button to say: I press wages”indicated Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, while Bruno Le Maire, the Minister of the Economy, called the companies “who can” raise wages to keep up with inflation. “I agree that not everything should rest on the shoulders of the state”reacted the president of Medef, for whom “companies have already played the game”.
However, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux said he was convinced that “wages will be reviewed” on the rise, because “Companies have no choice”, “simply because we can’t hire”. He pointed to the demographic reasons for this difficulty. “The age groups arriving on the labor market are fewer, we have before us a structural problem of supply and demandhe explained. If the working conditions are not reviewed, if the wages are not reviewed, there is no hiring”, insisted the president of Medef. It’s a question “logic and mathematics”according to him
Legislative elections: Jean-Luc Mélenchon will “lead France into chaos”
Jean-Luc Melenchon “is ready to govern, to lead France into chaos”crushed the president of Medef, while the leader of La France insoumise aims to become Prime Minister in the event of victory of the New Popular, Ecological and Social Union (Nupes) in the legislative elections. According to him, the program of the leader of the Nupes “is to tax all world”, in particular the companies which would be “massively’. Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux therefore foresees “that business leaders, the day there will be a Mélenchon government, will stop hiring and investing. They will just put down their pencils and wait for the tornado to pass.” He compares this with the common program of socialists and communists in 1981.
For Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, “we cannot control the economy from Matignon”. If Jean-Luc Mélenchon comes to power, “The 700,000 business leaders will simply say ‘I had a fixed-term contract, I’m not renewing it, I had a temporary contract, I’m not renewing it’.” According to him, in “a few months, it will just stop the economy definitively and plunge France into a serious recession”.
Pension reform “is essential”
If he says “very good” to understand “the anxiety-provoking side of the reform” pensions, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux considers “that it is essential”. “The problem with pensions is that we have fewer and fewer young people, people to pay contributions to more and more retirees”he recalled, while many trade unions, including the CGT, are opposed to the reform. “There are not 36 solutions: either we have unemployment at 3% and there there is no need to carry out a pension reform, but unfortunately this has never happened in France for 40 years, or we lengthens the contribution period more or less quickly”he said.
To hear it, “the most financially effective is the legal retirement age, the one that psychologically targets the most”. “The contribution period will not be enough”, he assured. He “think that there are two other parameters to take into account: there is one that is on the company side, it is the employment of seniors. We have efforts to make, he acknowledges. And there is what I call wear and tear at work, there are jobs where you actually have to be able to leave earlier because they are difficult to exercise”. “All the countries in Europe work longer than us, and they have the same genetics, the same professions, there is no reason why we cannot succeed”he insisted.