Revaluation of the minimum wage: “We will finally be able to get the truth about prices on salaries,” says the general secretary of the CFDT

While the government announced a 1.6% increase in the minimum wage, deemed insufficient by the unions, the general secretary of the CFDT, Marylise Léon, was the guest of "4V" on France 2, Tuesday November 10. She returned to the unemployment figures, the employment situation of young people and seniors, salary increases, the conditionality of public aid to businesses and the upcoming negotiations in the private sector and the public service. This text corresponds to part of the transcription of the interview above.

Click on the video to watch it in full. Francis Letellier: The unemployment figures have just fallen, according to INSEE. In the third quarter, that is to say from July to September, unemployment fell by 0.1%.

We are within the margin of error: 2,600,000 unemployed in France. Is this still good news? Marylise Léon: It's not good news to have this unemployment rate.

While there is no worsening of the situation, we have a real employment issue, particularly among young people and seniors. It is important that we can quickly open negotiations on youth employment with employers' organizations and that we resolve this issue of senior employment. You know that from a certain age, companies ask themselves more questions about how to make people leave rather than keep them.

It is therefore a real problem culturally, and then economically and socially, for the people concerned, it is dramatic. When we talk about salaries, we will come back to this very extensively, the employers warn by saying: be careful, if we increase salaries, including the minimum wage, this risks eliminating jobs. For you, is this a real threat?

Is this a real concern? This is a real threat. It all depends on the level of increase in the minimum wage.

I think there are extremely well-documented elements: the Dares [Directorate for the Animation of Research, Studies and Statistics] produces studies on this subject. But already, on the fact that the employers say that if we increase wages, jobs will be eliminated, do you agree with that? Not sure that this is a threat, but it is a prevention that they take regularly because in fact, they do not want us to take care of the question of salaries for them.

The whole issue of the social conference which took place yesterday, with this boost to the minimum wage, which is insufficient and which makes it possible to have branch negotiations, is an important step forward for the CFDT. This is an important step forward because we will finally be able to determine the truth about prices on wages, whether or not employers really want to move forward. Don't you see this as a form of blackmail on the part of Medef?

Machine-translated from French