How will the government manage to increase the minimum wage?

Raising the minimum wage to 1,500 euros per month compared to nearly 1,478 euros net currently, this is the objective of the government which is convening a social conference on Monday, November 9 in Matignon. To achieve this, there is first the mechanical increase in inflation. Traditionally scheduled for January, the government will bring it forward to December.

It should be around 1% and, as the minimum wage was already raised last June by 2.4%, this should roughly correspond to the increase in inflation, 3.4% this year. Around fifteen additional euros will thus be freed. To arrive at a total of 22 euros more and the famous 1,500 euros net, the government will activate a second lever, an additional boost this time at its discretion, between 0.5 and 0.6%.

Also read • Direct Social Conference: to respond to anger, the Prime Minister brings together the unions on Monday morning - Follow our live But he does not want to go too far beyond this because employers are not in favor of the increase in the minimum wage which has repercussions on businesses. If the minimum wage is too high, employers pretend that they will no longer be able to hire. The risk is therefore that this will weigh on jobs.

But we remain far from the unions' demand: the CFDT is asking for 100 euros more and the CGT 150. This is why the government will also force the branches whose social minimums are below the minimum wage to negotiate. As there have been several increases in the minimum wage in recent years, in many sectors, salary scales have not followed.

Today, out of 179 collective agreements, 179 sectors, more than 120 are not aligned with the minimum wage. "Nuclear deterrent weapon", last cartridge... To put pressure on employers, the Minister of Labor, Jean-Pierre Farandou has prepared a decree which aims to deprive or reduce public aid to sectors which do not want to negotiate, "a nuclear deterrent weapon", according to the number 1 of Force Ouvrière, who pushed this text hard.

According to him, "with this text, the government could say to employers: you increase wages, otherwise there will be no public aid." The government will also meet with public officials, because there too, there is a purchasing power problem. Civil servants are asking for a thaw in their index point which conditions their treatment and remuneration.

The executive no longer excludes it, like a few weeks ago. But there are five million civil servants in France, so the slightest thaw weighs on public finances. However, there is zero budgetary room for maneuver.

Machine-translated from French