Parliament definitively adopted, on Tuesday, November 14, the “full employment” bill and its criticized new requirements for active solidarity income (RSA) beneficiaries, by a final vote of the National Assembly.
After the positive vote of the senators, last week, the deputies in turn validated, by 190 votes to 147, the compromise between representatives of the two chambers on this text described as “major for our country” by the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt . It sets the emblematic milestone of an unemployment rate of 5% by 2027, to be achieved through increased support for people furthest from employment.
The executive is banking in particular on better coordination of actors in the public employment service, reorganized into a network around a Pôle emploi renamed France Travail – a name change that the reluctant senators ended up accepting.
The debates mainly focused on the new obligations imposed on those registered with an expanded list of job seekers which will now include all RSA beneficiaries. On this aspect, the presidential camp ended up acquiescing to an insistent request from the right: the explicit mention of a minimum of fifteen hours of weekly activities for all those registered on this list.
Support from LR parliamentarians
The government would have preferred not to set in stone an hourly volume that is unsuitable for some, and impossible to offer to everyone. But the Macronists put the concession into perspective, highlighting the many possible exceptions. In fact, according to the compromise between deputies and senators, the duration of fifteen hours could be reduced depending on “individual situations”. Some may be completely exempt, particularly in the event of health problems.
“This is not free work, nor volunteering”, but training or integration activities, insisted Olivier Dussopt throughout the debates. In the hemicycle, he defended on Tuesday “a quest for individual emancipation through work”. Among the most debated measures, the text establishes a new type of sanctions for RSA beneficiaries who do not respect their obligations. Their allowance may be suspended, but recoverable in the event of “remobilization”, within the limit of three months of payment.
The Les Républicains (LR) group was the only one in opposition to vote in favor of the bill. “We think that part of our social system is misguided, because it disincentivizes people to work,” said LR deputy Philippe Juvin, considering it legitimate to ask for compensation from RSA beneficiaries.
The National Rally (RN) which, during the debates, had spoken out against the fifteen hours, but had abstained during the vote on the new sanction, opposed the final text. If Marine Le Pen is elected president, RSA recipients “will no longer be considered parasites,” said Jocelyn Dessigny.
The left denounces a “text of stigmatization”
The left-wing groups jointly recalled their grievances. “The problem of unemployment is the question of the shortage of jobs,” judged La France insoumise (LFI) MP Louis Boyard. “Telling the French that it is the unemployed French people on RSA who are costing us dearly is a lie.” It is “a text of stigmatization and infantilization,” said communist deputy Pierre Dharréville. “In the absence of enriching workers, you choose to impoverish the unemployed,” tackled Benjamin Saint-Huile, of the independent Liot group, denouncing a text “which flatters base instincts.”
In another aspect aimed at tackling “peripheral obstacles to employment”, the compromise validated on Tuesday reintroduces an article on early childhood care, granting municipalities the status of organizing authorities. The article was deleted in the Assembly at first reading, under the crossfire of LFI, the RN, the communists and the Libertés, independents, overseas and territories (LIOT) group. With the support of the LR, deeming it too restrictive for small municipalities.
In the final text, “only municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants will be required to develop a multi-year plan for the provision of care for young children, as well as to set up an early childhood relay”, underlined the rapporteur Paul Christophe (Horizons).
The left planned to play one last card against the bill by seizing the Constitutional Council, indicated socialist deputy Arthur Delaporte. They will notably contest the “automatic registration of spouses” of RSA beneficiaries on the list of job seekers, as well as the lack of awareness, according to them, “of the right to a minimum subsistence income”.