Macron puts pressure on professional sectors under the minimum wage, but avoids the question of an increase

Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday urged professional sectors “which still have income below the minimum wage” to “relaunch” salary negotiations, in response to citizen mobilization for purchasing power. While the possibility of a future government "boost" for the minimum wage is mentioned, the Head of State avoided this question during an interview on the Youtube channel HugoDécrypte, referring to Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu. “I think that the key today is more in certain branches which have a level of remuneration which is below the minimum wage,” he added.

He felt that it was necessary to “relaunch, in the short term”, “social dialogues” in these branches. “I think this is part of the areas of effort.” According to a CGT study cited Wednesday by Le Parisien, 122 branches still offer at least one salary level below the minimum wage.

Five days ago, the Minister of the Economy Roland Lescure announced that an increase in the minimum wage “is part of the debates”. From 1% to 10% increase in the minimum wage on the table "If inflation continues (...) obviously the minimum wage will continue to increase.

And on the calendar we are obviously going to discuss it, it is part of the parameters that we must put on the table with the social partners", then replied the tenant of Bercy, questioned about a potential anticipated increase in the minimum wage. This measure must respond to the social anger of the country. An increase in the minimum wage to "buy social peace", added to the increase in the cost of labor planned in the Social Security budget risks "creating chaos in companies", estimated last Friday the president of Medef Patrick Martin.

Since then, the office of Minister of Labor Jean-Pierre Farandou has received the social partners in turn. The latter would have proposed an increase of 1%, far too low for the unions, who are demanding an increase of 100 euros in the net minimum wage, or almost a 7% increase for the CFDT. The CGT even demands a 10% increase in the minimum wage.

But the unions are also calling for a review of the entire salary scales. After the successive increases linked to the surge in consumer prices, a certain number of branches saw their scales fall below the minimum wage.

Machine-translated from French