Salaries: the government threatens sectors with minimums below the minimum wage

Showing the desire to “make work pay better”, Élisabeth Borne on Monday threatened branches with minimum wages below the minimum wage to lower their exemptions if there is no progress by June, closing a social conference with the social partners.

Welcoming a “useful” moment of consultation, the Prime Minister indicated that the Ministry of Labor would “soon receive all branches with minimums below the minimum wage so that they can explain their delay”. “If we do not see significant progress by June 1, 2024, the government will propose to Parliament a text of law which will allow exemptions to be calculated not on the basis of the minimum wage, but on the basis of the branch minimum,” she said.

Currently, 56 branches are not in compliance and around ten are “structurally”, according to the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt. This does not mean, however, that employees are paid below the minimum wage - the employer must make up the gap - but when several levels of seniority are caught up by the minimum wage, this generates a “flattening” of salaries.

Élisabeth Borne also proposed to the social partners to “build a new index” on gender equality, the current barometer being “perfectible” and announced a mission entrusted to experts on exemptions from social contributions. The Prime Minister also confirmed the creation of a High Council for Remuneration, which will focus in particular on part-time work and short contracts.

Also read Salaries: why the scales of certain branches start below the minimum wage

The union organizations (CFDT, CGT, FO, CFTC, CFE-CGC, Solidaires and Unsa) and employers (Medef, U2P, CPME, FNSEA, Fesac and Udes) were gathered for this high mass all day long at the Economic and Social Council and environmental (Cese) in the presence of several ministers. “We find ourselves today with the desire that work pays better and to relaunch social advancement,” the Prime Minister underlined at the opening, after a minute of silence in tribute to Dominique Bernard, the teacher killed in a attack on Friday in Arras.

“It is the negotiation which will lead to the revision of the classification grids” and “which will change the minimum salaries of the branches which are still below the minimum wage”, she clarified, even if “of course, the State will take all His part". If the unions welcomed the fact that the question of wages was “finally” on the menu of discussions, they expected something “concrete”.

“While inflation makes the ends of the month more difficult for many, purchasing power (...) is the number one concern of the French,” insisted the general secretary of the CFDT Marylise Léon, while her counterpart of the CGT Sophie Binet highlighted the “need for this day to be productive”. “For the workers, we do not give alms, and it is with the salary that we fill the fridge,” launched Frédéric Souillot (FO).

The Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt then underlined that “the State cannot be alone at the crossroads of expectations and demands”, while the Minister of the Economy listed several “dead ends” including the indexation of salaries to the inflation, demanded in particular by the CGT and FO. Bruno Le Maire mentioned different “areas of work”, such as the need to “boost productivity” or improve gender equality.

After these interventions, the unions were skeptical. “There’s no point in having us come for a day of social conference dedicated to salaries if we don’t talk about salaries,” said Sophie Binet. “I have doubts about the fact that we can deal with things when we have visions” based on “statistics, Excel spreadsheets and curves”, added Marylise Léon, while for François Hommeril (CFE-CGC) “ Bruno the Mayor is very strong, he closed all the doors.”

The social conference takes place three days after a half-hearted demonstration to defend purchasing power, which brought together between 92,500 and some 200,000 people in France. The downside is that it took place against a backdrop of deep disagreement between the social partners and the government over the finances of the private supplementary pension schemes (Agirc-Arrco) and unemployment insurance (Unedic). “There was never any question of taking money from them,” defended Élisabeth Borne, wishing however to “protect” the savings made in supplementary plans thanks to the pension reform.