The demands for short-time working to cope with the coronavirus are exploding. According to the latest count from the Ministry of Labor, 220,000 companies have applied. In total, 2.2 million employees are affected, including 600,000 additional just on the day of Friday. Many sectors are now affected and it is far from over.
If the requests increased last Friday, the explanation is first technical, we recognize the ministry. The platform was not initially set up to receive as many requests, but this acceleration is also due to an expanding economic deterioration.
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Initially, some companies were forced to close their doors to comply with containment measures and stem the epidemic of coronavirus. The hotel, catering and commercial sectors considered to be non-essential to the life of the nation such as florists and hairdressers were among the first to be concerned. There were also concerns in the implementation of the measure: bakeries for example were, at first, excluded from the system ...
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And now, even those who can open are starting to request partial unemployment, like many garage owners, who have very few customers ... "The demands (partial unemployment) that there are for the moment, is nothing compared to what there is going to be ", explains Alain Griset, president of U2P, the Union of Nearby Enterprises.
Large companies are starting to get started
"Basically, there are three million businesses today. A million and a half have employees and of this number, about 80% have little or no activity. One can imagine that we will exceed one million I have fellow pastry chefs who have opened ... but people are buying less, "he adds. "There is one who has 12-13 employees, he will have to put 5 or 6 in partial unemployment".
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So far, requests have come mainly from SMEs, but another trend is looming: partial unemployment in large companies ... In any case, for part of their workforce.