Paris (AFP)

Emmanuel Macron and Edouard Philippe bring together unions and employers Thursday in search of solutions to preserve employment, hard hit by the recession linked to the coronavirus crisis, the executive betting in parallel on the ongoing deconfinement to revive activity.

"It will be a question of working on what can be done to preserve employment and support for the most vulnerable, in particular young people entering the job market," the presidency said on Tuesday about this meeting scheduled for 3:00 p.m.

Union demands (CFDT, CGT, FO, CFE-CGC, CFTC, Unsa) and employers' demands (Medef, CPME, U2P, FNSEA) are likely to be numerous, even divergent, while macroeconomic indicators are all in red: the government anticipates a fall in GDP of 11% this year due to the "extremely brutal economic shock" caused by the almost total shutdown of the economy, linked to the epidemic.

More than eight million people are partially unemployed and more than six million job seekers were counted by Pôle emploi in April. Unheard of in France.

Expectations are therefore high since Tuesday when the deconfinement experienced a boost, with the lifting of the ban on traveling more than 100 km, or the opening of cafes, restaurants and small concert halls.

On the menu for discussions at this third meeting since the confinement - for the first time in "face-to-face" at the Elysée and not by videoconference -, "learning, partial activity, unemployment insurance", according to Marylise Léon, number two of the CFDT.

On the learning side, there is urgency.

Without state support, work-study participants expect a 20 to 40% drop in apprenticeship offers offered by companies.

In Le Parisien, Philippe Darmayan, president of the Union of Metallurgical Industries and Trades (UIMM), calls on the executive to a "pact", which would either be "state support for the remuneration of work-study students for at least 6 months ", ie" a doubling of the existing aid and its extension to all companies and all diplomas ".

- "Failures" -

Unemployment insurance side, all the unions ask since the beginning of the crisis the abandonment of the reform. Its second part, which tightens the calculation of the allowance for workers alternating short contracts and periods of unemployment, has already been postponed to September 1.

In recent days, the government has multiplied calls to businesses to set up "collective performance agreements", a system created at the start of the five-year period which allows for the adjustment of remuneration, working hours and employee mobility to preserve business and employment.

It allows "to say + rather than there are 20% who lose their jobs, we will for some time lower working time, therefore the remuneration +", praised Sunday the Minister of Labor Muriel Pénicaud, who will be present at the meeting at the Elysée with Bruno Le Maire (Economy), Gérald Darmanin (Public accounts), Didier Guillaume (Agriculture) and Laurent Pietraszewski (Protection of the health of employees against Covid-19).

But the unions take a dim view of this "solution". This is what the intention to say to Emmanuel Macron Yves Veyrier, the secretary general of FO. "Opposing wages to employment would be the worst answer, it would be a mistake from a macroeconomic point of view," he told MEPs on Wednesday.

And "no need to touch the legal duration of working time", for his part launched his counterpart of the CFDT, Laurent Berger, a week ago, before the same deputies.

The epidemic has crossed the 29,000 dead mark in France, according to the assessment published Wednesday evening by the Directorate General of Health. A total of 13,514 people are still hospitalized for a Covid-19 infection, including 1,210 in intensive care.

The virus is therefore still circulating, as are questions about French "failures", which will be studied under a magnifying glass for six months by the commission of inquiry on the management of the epidemic, set up Wednesday by the National Assembly.

© 2020 AFP