The milestone of 500,000 companies having filed a request for partial unemployment with the administration is now crossed: they are 544,000 to have taken this step, announced Tuesday evening Muriel Pénicaud. This figure represents 5.8 million employees, or one in four private sector employees.
In the name of the necessary preservation of the economic fabric, the government therefore assumes its open-window policy. At the risk of benefiting the device from companies which, in fact, continue to make their employees work, a completely illegal practice. But Muriel Pénicaud warned: companies that cheat will be heavily penalized. It is still necessary to unmask them ...
Checks from mid-April
To do this, the administration will take its time. The priority today is, in fact, not to track down companies that defraud, but to record at best all the requests that arrive in Direccte (the services of the Ministry of Labor in the departments). "Our logic, said yesterday Muriel Pénicaud, is trust a priori ... control a posteriori".
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The controls will start, at best, from mid-April. And they will first target sectors where it is easy for an employer to ask his employees to continue working without this being seen too much. In other words, the sectors where you can telework your employees.
How, then, to detect fraud? Investigators will look for example at the volume of emails exchanged in the company during the period of partial unemployment. If the suspicions persist, they can also analyze the accounting elements. So, if you come out of the period with the correct cash flow, it will seem suspicious.
In the head offices of large companies, if all the support functions are on partial unemployment, this can also prove to be suspicious since there are always some who cannot stop, such as the establishment of pay, by example. Companies will therefore have to justify themselves.
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2 years in prison and 30,000 euros fine
As far as the sanctions are concerned, they could be heavy, ranging from full reimbursement of the sums collected as part-time unemployment to the ban on receiving public aid for a period of up to 5 years. employment and vocational training. And in the most serious cases, they may fall under criminal law, fraudulent employers risking up to 2 years in prison and a fine of 30,000 euros.
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