The exit has upset some members of the Nupes. On September 9, in the middle of the Fête de l’Humanité, Fabien Roussel made a protrusion that scandalized several of his allies within the coalition: “The left must defend work and not be the left of allowances and social minima.” A judged speech “almost reactionary” on franceinfo on September 11 by Marine Tondelier, EELV regional councilor for Hauts-de-France, who suspects the national secretary of the PCF of using a “strategy [pour] chock [et] talk about him”.
The same day, Fabien Roussel however drives the point home and clarifies his thoughts on TF1: “I want to put an end to a system which, today, feeds unemployment through unemployment benefits (…) We must allow everyone to live from their work, because it is work that restores dignity.” Is the communist leader right to incriminate the unemployment insurance system in the employment situation?
I hope that we can guarantee the French, future generations a life with work and a dignified salary.
Not a life of unemployment. #JT13H #fetedelhuma pic.twitter.com/N2ayfnPczq— Fabien Roussel (@Fabien_Roussel) September 10, 2022
Fabien Roussel takes up an idea defended on the right according to which theUnemployment insurance can promote unemployment by encouraging a form of job search declaration fraud. A “moral hazard”, explains Bruno Coquet, labor market expert affiliated with the OFCE. Rather than accepting a position offered by Pôle emploi, however “in accordance with his skills” and to his “salary requirements”an unemployed person could, according to this idea, be tempted to refuse in order to continue to receive his allowances without working.
“France is rather a country where there is little moral hazard”, reassures Bruno Coquet. According to Eric Heyer, director of the analysis and forecasting department at the OFCE, around 8% of the unemployed do not play the game. And according to a note from Pôle emploi published in 2018, fraud, all causes combined, represented only 0.5% of the total amounts paid in unemployment benefits in 2016. “The vast majority of unemployed people want to work”would like to point out Cathel Kornig, sociologist and associate member of the Labor Economics and Sociology Laboratory (Lest). “They are looking for work, they don’t want [juste] not work at any price.“
Unemployment insurance is also criticized “because it would lengthen the duration of unemployment”, continues Bruno Coquet. But “it is [précisément] the objective that economists give to [ce système] : to offer the possibility for an unemployed person to maintain his consumption until he finds a job in line with his skillsreplies the expert. A 50-year-old senior who worked for Airbus and who loses his job is not going to go tomorrow morning to take a job in a brewery.” Such unplanned retraining would result in a loss of skills and investment in training.
It also appears that the level of allowances only has an impact “weak“on the duration of unemployment, according to an article of the Journal of Political Economy published in 2006. In France, “a one-month extension of the duration of the rightswill result in only a four or five day extension” of inactivity, confirmed Bruno Coquett. A range that corresponds to the average observed abroad, according to a study by theAnnual Review of Economics, review American academic.
The negative influence of unemployment insurance on employment is all the more reduced since only 40% of the unemployed are compensated, “that is less than one in two”, recalls Cathel Kornig. At the end of their rights, or not having worked enough hours, a majority of unemployed people are not eligible for compensation. And among the recipients, “half work in reduced activity: these are job seekers who will remain registered with Pôle Emploi, work for three months, and return to unemployment”.
On the other hand, a drastic reduction in benefits would cause deleterious effects, warns Laura Khoury, researcher at the Norwegian School of Economics, in Bergen, Norway.
“If workers are incentivized to seek employment at all costs and move into positions that do not match their qualifications or are of lower quality, this will potentially create low-productivity jobs, which will be damaging to the economy. economy.”
Laura Khoury, economistat franceinfo
Asked by franceinfo, Ian Brossat, spokesman for the PCF, clarifies the thoughts of Fabien Roussel: “The system is very unfavorable to workers. We say that the ambition of the left must not be simply the social treatment of unemployment. It must be the eradication of unemployment.”
On September 12, on Sud Radio, the former presidential candidate also estimated that “right-wing governments (…) have damaged work by creating a society with a lot of fixed-term contracts, precariousness”generating “an army of unemployed, as Karl Marx said, which allows pressure to be exerted on the workers“.
On this last point, the national secretary of the PCF agrees with the conclusions of a note published in 2015 by the Economic Analysis Council (CAE). He wrote that the characteristics of “unemployment insurance promotes the development of unstable jobs”companies not being encouraged “to take into account the cost they impose on unemployment insurance accounts when they frequently use very short contracts”.
Ian Brossat also wishes to recall that the PCF is “obviously against the reduction of unemployment benefits” while specifying that the “system [des allocations] is intended to be transitory”the party wishing “fight for a society without unemployment”. In a column published on September 13 in The worldFabien Roussel affirms that he will be alongside the employees “to denounce all government attacks against them”, as “unemployment insurance reform” led by the executive.