“We will go to Matignon”, assured Sophie Binet this Tuesday morning on France 2, while unions and employers are to be received by Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on Wednesday. Asked about a possible boycott of this meeting by the CGT, the boss of the union replied that she would go there “to tell him that the pension reform is a bad reform, and that it is not behind us , because it will apply from September 1 for millions of French people in catastrophic conditions that we denounce”.
“We will also go to bring the real priorities of employees,” she added, before listing “salaries, a taboo word for the government, having good protection when you lose your job, the unemployment insurance which the government wants to draw on to finance its France Travail reform and finance controls for RSA recipients”. She also wants to talk about “equality between women and men”, “social democracy at work”.
The idea is to go there with “very concrete proposals”, but “by demanding answers and measures in relation to social expectations”, specified Sophie Binet. No question indeed for her to turn the page of the pension reform, nor even to sign the famous “social agenda” on which the employers’ organizations and trade unions have agreed, with the exception of the CGT. “Simply because “there is nothing” in this agenda “on the priorities” of the General Confederation of Labor, “namely wages and unemployment insurance”, deplores the general secretary.
As a reminder, this agenda is made up of three blocks. The first includes the subjects on which employers and unions agree to negotiate (four-year management agreement for Agirc-Arrco, supplementary pension plan for private sector employees, etc.). A second block includes several important themes on which unions and employers say they are ready to negotiate, but diverge on the method (employment of seniors, career paths, prevention of hardship, etc.). Finally the text lists a third block of “non-arbitrated” subjects on which employers and unions display their disagreements on the interest of negotiation, in the first place unemployment insurance.
