“The main problem today is that employers refuse to hire”, replies the CGT unemployed and precarious workers

The government announced on Friday that it wanted to “considerably speed up checks” on unemployment insurance beneficiaries. Victoire Bech, member of the national leadership of the CGT unemployed and precarious workers, denounces “a myth of the unemployed who would not wish to work”.

Traveling Friday March 1 in the Vosges, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced that the government would “considerably speed up controls” of unemployment insurance beneficiaries, with an increase from 500,000 checks today to 1.5 million checks per year by the end of 2027. “The main problem today is that employers refuse to hire”replies Victoire Bech, member of the national leadership of the CGT unemployed and precarious workers, guest on franceinfo.

franceinfo: What do you think of the announcements made by Gabriel Attal, do you think they are going in the right direction?

Victoire Bech: These announcements are in line with what has been done for several years, since controls have drastically increased in recent years and the radiation that went with it as well. We are totally opposed to this measure which consists, once again, of looking to the side of the unemployed to justify mass unemployment. While the main problem is that employers refuse to hire or that they hire in conditions of precariousness, deterioration of working conditions and wages which largely explain the precariousness of workers. Precarious workers represent a significant proportion of unemployment insurance beneficiaries.

But haven’t these reforms helped to lower the unemployment rate?

If you look at the interim report that Dares has just issued [département des statistiques du ministère du Travail] regarding the 2019 unemployment insurance reforms, he indicated that these reforms created, in total, 22,000 positions. What means that today, it is absolutely not the unemployment insurance reforms which created the positions but rather the fact that we qualify a one-day contract as a return to work. The fall in the unemployment rate is linked to the obligation imposed on the unemployed to accept any job, including contracts of one hour per month, and when they have work even if only one hour, they are no longer counted in the unemployment figures. Consequently, we must question the reality of the figures put forward by the government and by the International Labor Office since today, the ILO figures de facto exclude a very, very large number of workers deprived of employment and precarious. This allows the government to minimize the systemic nature of unemployment and especially the great responsibility of employers in this mass phenomenon. Employers who do not want or do not seek to hire.

However, many employers in sectors under pressure, such as construction, hotels or restaurants, complain of not being able to hire. Isn’t there a responsibility of the unemployed?

Pôle emploi studies show the opposite. As of February 2021, there were 6% of offers that had not been filled. And among these 6%, all had received candidates. If these offers had not been filled, it was for three reasons. The first is the absence of candidates with sufficient qualifications. The second, the absence of candidates with sufficient motivation, is a concept that still remains to be defined. And the third was the abandonment of recruitment due to the cancellation of the need for recruitment. So, in reality, today, for all the job offers that appear on the Pôle emploi website [ou France Travail depuis le 1er janvier 2024], we find candidates. It is the employers who refuse the candidates who present themselves.

Negotiations around the employment of seniors are at a standstill, are you worried about a reduction in unemployment benefits for seniors?

The senior negotiations which are underway indicate very clearly that the right to compensation for seniors will be revisited downwards in an extremely drastic manner since all the derogations from the normal system which affected those over 55 will be removed. The government has also indicated that if the negotiations did not succeed in this direction, it would take control again with a framework letter and legislate by decree or by law, even though we are in a context where all seniors can say it: from the age of 50, finding a job becomes an obstacle course. So today, we are being presented with a project for a new senior fixed-term contract which amounts more or less to having the jobs of workers over 50 financed by social contributions, therefore by Unédic, by the State budget or through very significant subsidies and elimination of social security contributions.

Bruno Le Maire, the Minister of the Economy, justified that by compensating seniors for a little longer, we were not encouraging them to return to work. Do you dispute this statement?

I completely dispute this diagnosis since most unemployed seniors are totally desperate by the situation. In reality, it is the employers who do not want to hire or who want to hire on their own terms, that is to say who refuse to pay for the work. We are plunging a very large part of the population into poverty. It is the desire of the employers and the government to systematically point the finger at the unemployed when in reality the employers are creating extremely great blackmail so that the government legislates in the direction of a drastic reduction in wages and working conditions, towards more precariousness, towards reduced salaries, towards salaries subsidized by the State or even by social contributions. This is, in our opinion, the one and only motivation for these reforms. There is a myth of the unemployed who do not wish to work when in reality, the situation of job deprivation in France today generates psychological disorders and social isolation that few workers can cope with.