The final verdict on the pension reform has just been delivered this Friday by the Constitutional Council. If the flagship measure of 64 years has been adopted by the institution, others have been rejected, in particular that of the “senior index”. The Constitutional Council considered that the provisions on the employment of seniors had no place in a budget text. What was the “senior index” really supposed to change for companies? Le Figaro takes stock of this device.
Initially, this senior index, present in article 2, was to be mandatory from November for companies with more than 1,000 employees. The threshold would then have been lowered to 300 employees from July 2024. Concretely, the companies should have made public their employment figures for seniors, that is to say workers aged 55 to 64. According to Elisabeth Borne, this made it possible to “promote good practices and denounce bad ones”. Especially since France is a bad student in the employability of seniors, with an employment rate of 56% against nearly 70% in Germany.
In the event of non-publication of this senior index, employers would have been liable to financial sanctions, with a fine of up to 1% of the payroll. However, no obligation of result had been set. During the study of the text in the National Assembly and the Senate, the left had long scrapped against this index, pointed as a “legislative horseman”, and perceived as “a gadget” and “a decoy”. “The index is as useful as the toll-free number for combating the heat wave”, had then launched the communist Fabien Gay.
In the National Assembly, the right had voted against article 2, after the extension of the index to companies with more than 50 employees from July 2025. This had caused the rejection of the article, a serious setback for the government and the presidential majority. On March 6, the Senate then approved the creation of this senior index by 244 votes to 96.
Now that the project has been challenged by the Constitutional Council, the Minister of Labour, Olivier Dussopt, ensures that the employment of seniors “remains a priority for the government”. “We must, with the social partners and parliamentarians, find ways and means to support and improve the employment rate of employees aged over 50,” tweeted this Friday. The senior index may however be addressed again during the “Full Employment” law, the implementation of which is targeted for the summer of 2023.
