In his busy schedule, Jean Castex opens a "social partners" sequence on Thursday morning. Within 48 hours, the Prime Minister will receive, one after the other, all the unions and employers' organizations. The CFDT opens the ball Thursday at 8:30 am. A first lap, before a meeting with them all together by July 20, which will aim "to establish a method and a calendar".
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"May the state respect us"
Officially, therefore, the meetings for the next two days are a contact. But it could well be more. Because Jean Castex is a man in a hurry and the files to be treated accumulate. In any case, the head of government does not want to be caught out on his reputation as a man of dialogue. "I am reaching out to the social partners," he told JDD on Sunday .
François Hommeril, the president of the CFE-CGC, takes him at his word: "He said 'the State cannot do everything' ... Banco! Let the State respect us and let us do for the part that concerns the social. " And the manager pointed out that this way of doing things was not always in vogue at Matignon during the start of the Macron quinquennium. "That Jean Castex does not do what the previous government had done: that he did not come to drive the motorcycle for us because, there, from the moment there is a turn, it is an accident . "
Pension reform still at the heart of discussions
The turns, the potholes and the speed bumps, there are bound to be. With, everyone thinks about it, the subject of pensions that Emmanuel Macron has put back on the circuit. Unions, including those who had accompanied the reform before the coronavirus crisis, believe that this is no longer the time and that the emergency is rather at work. Employers are not far from thinking the same thing.
Never mind, says Jean Castex. According to him, it would be "irresponsible to refuse to talk about pensions when the balance of accounts, and therefore the safeguard of the current system, is compromised". From this morning, the social partners will be able to test, on this and other subjects (such as the fate of the unemployment insurance reform in particular), the know-how of the new host of Matignon.