After his televised address on Monday evening, Emmanuel Macron received employers at the Elysee Palace at 11 a.m. Tuesday morning. The representatives of the Medef, the CPME and the U2P spoke for a long time with the President of the Republic, to discuss in particular the “Pact of life at work”, announced Monday by the President of the Republic, who 100 days are given to move forward on this project, as well as that of justice and progress. And to relaunch his five-year term after the difficult sequence of pension reform.
Moreover, although invited around the table, the employee unions boycotted the meeting. Having been unable to obtain the famous “period of decency” demanded of the Head of State before the promulgation of the law, they denounced the contempt of a president whose remarks last night “show that he did not still not understood the anger expressed in the country”.
Faced with the representatives of the employers’ organizations who responded, the president wished to leave time for social negotiation, on all the subjects that could be the subject of negotiations, in particular on the aspects of the pension reform challenged by the Constitutional Council. He thus mentioned the employment of seniors, but also the salary, the working conditions, the professional retraining, the professional wear and tear, the working time suffered, the chopped careers, announcing to leave to the social partners “until the end of the year to discuss” to negotiate this “pact of life at work”.
“What we understood is that the president wants to better involve the social partners in future discussions, in particular on the employment of seniors and what has been removed by the Constitutional Council (from the pension reform, editor’s note. )”, explained Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux at the end of the meeting. During the meeting, the Chairman also mentioned professional transitions, career paths in companies as well as the forthcoming arrival of a law on the sharing of value, referring more generally to his desire to “better associate the social partners by leaving to work, ”said the boss of bosses.
A desire to renew social dialogue, which the U2P also welcomed, which “welcomes the desire displayed yesterday by the President of the Republic, to put in place a new method which is based more on the search for compromise between representatives of companies and employees”.
However, “we are waiting for the unions to return” declared the president of Medef, who indicated that he did not want to wait until May 1 (the date before which the unions do not wish to resume dialogue with the government) to contact the organizations. unions in order to “see what we can agree on to negotiate”. François Asselin, the president of the CPME, has, meanwhile, mentioned the possibility of a meeting “where everyone would be invited”, from the week of May 8. In any case, in terms of the timetable, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux reaffirmed that “100 days is too short to reach conclusions and have time for negotiation”.
This is why, perhaps, the president wanted to leave the social partners “until the end of the year” to bring the discussions to a conclusion. Knowing that the two national interprofessional agreements signed in the middle of the pension reform sequence – that on the sharing of value and that on the ecological transition in business – took between 7 and 9 months to succeed. “What came out of this meeting is valuable. We dare to believe in a change of method on the part of the president”, indicated Jean-Christophe Repon, vice-president of the U2P in charge of social dialogue.
