The CGT’s warning on supplementary pensions. “There is no question” that the government is using the coffers of the private sector regime, Agirc-Arrco, and the union is making it a “red line”, its general secretary Sophie Binet warned this Sunday. During the night from Wednesday to Thursday, the employer and union organizations co-managing Agirc-Arrco concluded an agreement on the four-year management of this fund. Taking advantage of the surpluses, they decided to increase pensions by 4.9% on November 1 and to remove the 10% “malus” which encouraged employees to postpone their departure by one year.
Above all, they stood together on one point: their refusal to organize a “financial pipeline” to the State, which was asking them for between 1 and 3 billion euros annually by 2030 to help finance the planned increase in small pensions. through pension reform, and the “return to balance” of the global system. The Ministry of Labor had warned that without measures, it would drain the system via the social security financing bill (PLFSS).
“I really alert the government. There is no question of the government calling this agreement into question and going to the coffers,” warned Sophie Binet on France Inter/France Télévisions/Le Monde. “We have a President of the Republic who still has not understood what social democracy, paritarianism, is, and who thinks that he can go and help himself from the employees’ coffers (…) when he wants and for what he wants,” she added, also referring to the project to drain Unemployment Insurance revenue. “It would be extremely serious,” insisted Sophie Binet. “It’s a red line” because it “will degrade the rights of private sector employees”.
The State has “other levers” to finance its reform, in particular the almost “90 billion in exemptions from social contributions for businesses”, which it could “reduce a little”, according to her. She also did not specify whether the CGT would sign the joint agreement, the deadline for which is set for Wednesday. “There is progress that we have made but everything is not settled, (…) in particular the fact that the amount of pensions of future retirees will continue to move away from the amount of their last salary,” said -she explained. “We are debating it on Monday in the confederal office”, but at the CGT, “we are consulting our federations and departmental unions very widely” before “deciding whether to sign or not” and “it will take fifteen days”.