“We want a real shock”: the government plans to increase the minimum wage by 15 euros before January 1, the CFDT wants “100 euros net”

Will the minimum wage be increased sooner than expected? According to information from Les Échos, the government plans to bring forward by a few weeks the mechanical increase in the minimum wage normally set for next January 1, which could be 1%, or 15 euros net per month. "This is not what the CFDT is asking for", reacted this Friday morning its general secretary Marylise Léon on TF1, also judging it "quite unpleasant" to have learned through the press of this measure envisaged by the executive, while she will be received in the afternoon by the Minister of Labor, Jean-Pierre Farandou, to talk about questions of purchasing power.

“We want a real shock,” continued Marylise Léon, who called for a “significant increase” in the minimum wage. “The CFDT is asking for a 100 euro increase in the minimum wage”, “net”, affirmed the general secretary of the CFDT. “And from there, we must reassess all the classification grids, therefore all the coefficients of the collective agreements,” she added, affirming that the salary question should have been “a priority project” for “three years”.

“The employers' organizations are committed to discussing this subject in the branches. Results: zero. This was also one of the subjects of Élisabeth Borne's salary conference in 2023.

It's not moving forward," lamented the union leader. "We have to go from neutral to fifth." "I will say to Jean-Pierre Farandou: we have to go from neutral to fifth. There, directly, because we must accelerate and be lucid about the fact that there is a real subject on purchasing power,” affirmed Marylise Léon.

The latter also estimated that a company which “does not play the game in collective negotiations” should no longer “be entitled to exemptions from contributions”. “We are demanding a 10% increase in the minimum wage, as well as the indexation of all salaries to prices,” said the general secretary of the CGT, Sophie Binet, on Franceinfo. But “the problem is that [wages] are flattening.”

“The employers are blackmailing us, because over the past 10 years compulsory corporate deductions have fallen considerably” and “despite that, there are companies which are not increasing their salaries and are cutting jobs”, she assured. “What we want is not only to anticipate the increase on January 1, what we want is for there to be a real boost to the minimum wage,” said the secretary general of Unsa, Dominique Corona, on BFM Business. Unsa is calling for an increase in the minimum wage "from November 1", but also "a helping hand" so that "the most precarious employees can have more purchasing power", he assured.

Machine-translated from French