What can Sébastien Lecornu hope for from his social conference scheduled for Monday?

Monday, November 9, the government and the social partners (unions and employers) all met once again around the same table to talk about wages and purchasing power. After three Saturdays of demonstrations and an inter-union mobilization, Thursday, it is a question for them of finding common ground and, above all, rapid and concrete decisions. Also read When and by how much to increase the minimum wage?

Both questions are "on the table" of the government. There is plenty to grind, between the demands of young people, the union demands and the expectations of the French in terms of income. The Minister of Labor Jean-Pierre Farandou is also responsible for finalizing consultations on these subjects by Sunday evening with employer representatives. A boost to the minimum wage will not be enough For this meeting on Monday, the unions are in roughly the same state of mind.

The CGT sets the tone through its general secretary Sophie Binet: “The question being asked today is not ‘are we going to win’ but ‘how much are we going to win’”. While she is counting on an increase in the minimum wage of 150 euros, her CFDT counterpart, Marylise Léon, is asking for a boost of 100 euros and concrete answers for the French people's ends of the month. Nothing new in the demands, except that the pressure is stronger than ever with the prospect of new popular mobilizations if no response is provided.

This social conference on Monday will have difficulty leading to concrete decisions. The government is in an impasse and the Prime Minister is very helpless, with very narrow, if not non-existent, room for maneuver in the face of an abysmal debt and the need to reduce public deficits. Reassuring young people about the world of work As for employers, they keep repeating it: letting go of wages today is difficult without a reduction in the tax pressure that weighs on work.

They assure that it is particularly impossible for SMEs, in the current economic context, to embark on such a path without endangering their cash flow and the investments necessary for their development. The question of the minimum wage will obviously be on the table. Will employer representatives agree to a limited increase in the minimum wage, which would be added to an automatic increase of around 1% on January 1?

Obviously, this will be an opportunity for employers to do everything they can to obtain in return an unfreezing of reductions in charges on low wages, as well as a reduction in contributions for youth employment. Besides the minimum wage, it is difficult to see how the youth subject can be absent from the program of this social conference organized next Monday.

Machine-translated from French