the essential During a meeting with representatives of employers’ organizations on Tuesday at the Élysée, Emmanuel Macron said he wanted to give them “until the end of this year” to “build” the “pact of life at work”.
It was a highly anticipated meeting. The day after his televised speech, Emmanuel Macron received the social partners this Tuesday April 18 in the morning at the Élysée to discuss, following the adoption of the pension reform and to discuss “the three projects” listed the day before, including the “work life pact”. The Head of State gives them “until the end of this year” to “build” the “pact of life at work” which he calls for to turn the page on the pension crisis.
“The objective that we must give ourselves is that the complete agenda of the negotiations be defined in the coming weeks, the coming months in a solid way” “and that we give you the time for the negotiation, I would say until ‘at the end of this year to be able to build this pact,’ said Emmanuel Macron at the opening of this meeting.
The Head of State assured that he did not want to “give the feeling of rushing”, while the boss of the Medef Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux had affirmed this Monday evening, after the presidential address, that social dialogue would take more time than the 100 days that Emmanuel Macron seemed to give him.
Negotiation “without limits, without taboos”
A meeting in which the unions were supposed to take part but the latter, still revolted against the pension reform, decided to shun it, saying they wanted to wait at least until the traditional day of social mobilization on May 1 to exchange.
“My wish is that we can start the discussion today”, explained Emmanuel Macron, but “the door is obviously open” in order to see “after May 1” the “union organizations which wish to enter the definition” of a “social agenda”. “If you are ready, trade unions and employers’ organizations, to go faster, we are completely at your disposal”, insisted the president, reaffirming his objective of a negotiation “without limit, without taboos”.
100 days before a “first assessment”
Emmanuel Macron announced this Monday evening to give himself 100 days, until a “first assessment” on July 14, to launch his post-retirement projects, including this “pact of life at work”. These negotiations must cover the provisions of the pension reform invalidated by the Constitutional Council as well as other aspects. “How to live better from work, how to live better at work, how to better prepare for the end of careers and retraining”, listed the president. “All the questions of remuneration, obviously of the branches which are below the level of the legal Smic”, “the question of professional wear”, “working conditions”, the fight “against the part-time suffered which creates the workers poor” or even “the universal time savings account”, he continued.
