Unions denounce government conference on employment as an empty gesture

In December 2006, the French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, brought together trade unions and employer representatives for a national conference on employment and income. The last such meeting had been held in 1997, during Lionel Jospin’s tenure. While the employers expressed satisfaction with this event, the unions unanimously denounced the government initiative as a ‘public relations’ stunt.

On 14 December 2006, the French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, organised a conference which brought together the social partners in France to discuss employment and income issues. A major aim of the conference was to turn around the image Mr Villepin created last spring, when had tried to impose the ‘first job contract’ (Contrat première embauche, CPE) (FR0605059I) without prior consultation.

In preparation for this conference, a report was drafted by the Council for Employment, Income and Social Cohesion (Conseil de l’emploi, des revenus et de la cohésion sociale, CERC), and submitted to the Prime Minister on 17 November 2006.

The report emphasised that employment instability is one of the causes of ‘increasingly unequal income in France’. It also mentioned in its conclusions that ‘one of the crucial aspects of the fight against inequality, or more exactly of access to decent standards of living, is related to the issue of ensuring better employment security over the career path’.

At the end of the conference on 14 December, the Prime Minister proposed ‘a certain number of measures and plans for the coming weeks’. He also said he would like such a conference to be held annually. The following specific measures were announced:

• Additional guarantees to cover landlords against the risk of unpaid rent.

• Tax credit for households that are below the income tax threshold and use the services of childminders or of those providing housework support.

• Finally, the annual increase in the statutory minimum wage (salaire minimum interprofessionnel de croissance, SMIC), which comes into force on 1 July each year, will in future be announced on 1 January, in order to ‘enable sector-level pay bargaining to take place with full knowledge of the situation’. According to the Minister of Employment, Gérard Larcher, 73 sectors of the economy still paid minimum wages below the level of the SMIC in 2006 (FR0604019I).

Social partner reactions

The trade unions unanimously denounced this conference as a ‘staged event’ organised by the government and also criticised the fact that there were few real results.

The General Secretary of the General Confederation of Labour (Confédération générale du travail, CGT), Bernard Thibault, stated: ‘It’s a staged event… The only ones who are satisfied are the employers, because the government hasn’t asked them for anything.’ According to the General Secretary of the French Democratic Confederation of Labour (Confédération française démocratique du travail, CFDT), François Chérèque: ‘The Prime Minister’s declarations are notoriously inadequate… It was a staged event which enabled us to discuss the issues, but the conclusions did not take into account what was said’. The General Secretary of the General Confederation of Labour – Force ouvrière (Confédération générale du travail – Force ouvrière, CGT-FO), Jean-Claude Mailly, expressed his disappointment: ‘I didn’t expect any miracles and there weren’t any’. For the French Christian Workers’ Confederation (Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens, CFTC), Jacques Voisin declared: ‘It was very superficial and did not meet employee expectations’. As for the French Confederation of Professional and Managerial Staff – General Confederation of Professional and Managerial Staff (Confédération française de l’encadrement – Confédération générale des cadres, CFE-CGC), its newly re-elected President (FR0701029I), Bernard van Craeynest, said the results were ‘mixed’.

The employer organisations were quite satisfied with the event. According to the President of the Movement of French Enterprises (Mouvement des entreprises de France, MEDEF), Laurence Parisot, ‘the day was rather useful’. The President of the General Confederation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (Confédération générale des petites et moyennes entreprises, CGPME), Jean-François Roubaud, said he was ‘quite satisfied with the day’.

Commentary

Before the conference, the unions were sceptical about whether the government would introduce any significant measures just five months before the presidential elections.

The CERC report mentioned the importance of ensuring better employment security over the career path, one of the demands of the 47th Congress of the CGT in 2003 (FR0305102N), subsequently adopted by many political and social players. This reference might have encouraged the idea that the conference could provide an opportunity to tackle this issue, and more generally, the problem of growing job insecurity.

Demonstrations in spring 2006 had forcefully raised the issue of purchasing power and real pay. This issue returned to the forefront of public debate in autumn 2006 (FR0609029I), following on from the controversy about the gap between the official price index and household purchasing power. The absence of any concrete answer to this question at the end of the conference is the main explanation for the trade union reactions. They had put forward various proposals, none of which were accepted.

Pierre Concialdi, Institute for Economic and Social Research (IRES)