Unions and employers were rather positive, Wednesday, July 12, after a meeting in Matignon with the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, to lay the foundations for a new social agenda. The participants did not start from a blank page, relying on the roadmap resulting from discussions held in June.
Employment of seniors, professional careers, prevention of professional wear and tear, support for professional retraining, universal time savings account, on which the social partners have agreed to negotiate, were on the menu of discussions.
The issue was to know what place the government intends to take in these discussions and whether it wants to fall within the framework of article L1 of the labor code which provides that the government should frame the negotiations with a guidance document.
The head of government has promised “broad” guidance documents for these tripartite discussions, “which leave[s] all their room for dialogue to the social partners”, and reiterates her commitment to “faithfully and fully transcribe the agreements into law which would be found between the social partners directly”.
It is “a useful meeting which finally allows us to have some action taken”, welcomed the new general secretary of the CFDT, Marylise Léon, elected on June 21. “The actions taken are that there will indeed be the opening of a negotiation or several negotiations – this remains to be defined – at the start of the school year”, on “the question of professional careers, hardship, professional retraining , the employment of seniors, (…) the universal time savings account, ”she said.
Reconnecting the threads of social dialogue
The general secretary of the CGT, Sophie Binet, was unsurprisingly more critical, considering that “at this stage the answers given by the Prime Minister are totally out of step with the needs”. But she also noted a “trembling of autonomy” from Elisabeth Borne “in the face of employers”, the latter having acceded to the unions’ request to initiate discussions on the subject of the employment of seniors and professional wear and tear in a tripartite framework, with the sending of a “framework letter” prior to negotiations, according to article L1 of the labor code.
The boss of FO, Frédéric Souillot, spoke of a “normal day in the context of collective bargaining”, and that of the CFE-CGC, François Hommeril, a “very useful meeting” which “goes in the direction of reconnecting the threads social dialogue”. The Prime Minister “proposes to make the social partners responsible (…) in a framework in which we [the CFE-CGC] understood that she would give indicators so that the balance of power is sufficiently balanced between employers and employees,” he said.
It is “an important day, it is the resumption of social dialogue”, greeted the president of the CFTC, Cyril Chabanier. For him, the negotiations must be completed “by the spring of 2024” in order to be “applicable to the second half of 2024”.
For Patrick Martin, who will succeed Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux at the head of Medef on July 17, this meeting “completely meets the expectations, philosophy and proposals that Medef has been making for several months”. “We are not in favor [of the article] L1 but it is of public order in a certain number of cases and in particular on the employment of seniors and wear and tear, so we will adapt to it”, a- he said.
CPME boss François Asselin spoke of an “ambitious agenda” on which it should be possible to achieve “spring”.
