In wanting to extend the working time of seniors in its pension reform, the government is facing a problem: the employment rate of older employees.
In France, this is particularly low.
Only 35.5% of 60-64 year olds are still working.
To counter this, the executive wants to create a senior index for companies.
The possible measure is struggling to convince the economic experts interviewed by
20 Minutes
.
In France, white hair and employment rarely go hand in hand.
Only 56% of 55-64 year olds work, including barely 35.5% of 60-64 year olds, according to figures from DARES in April 2022. That is eight points less than the average for the countries of the Organization for Cooperation and of economic development (OECD).
The deficient employment rate of seniors in France is part of the long litany of criticisms of the government's pension reform plan.
How to extend the working time of the oldest employees when they are already skating to get a job?
Do not panic, reassures the government, a solution exists.
The bill provides for the creation of a seniors index, obliging companies to declare the number of employees over 55, the actions implemented to keep them in their jobs or to recruit more people in this class of 'age.
It will be compulsory from this year for companies with more than 1,000 employees and from 2024 for companies with more than 300 employees.
Initially, this index was mainly intended as an incentive.
According to Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, it “will make it possible to promote good practices and denounce bad ones.
But this weekend, the tone changed: Gabriel Attal,
minister responsible for action and public accounts and government spokesman Olivier Véran have hinted that more coercive measures could be considered.
This Monday, Olivier Dussopt, Minister of Labour, confirmed that financial sanctions would be taken for companies with more than 300 employees in the event of "non-compliance" with the advertising of this index, which could go up to 1% of payroll.
General skepticism
For the economist Marc Touati, the pension reform project pulls in two opposite directions: “The reform provides for many devices allowing people to leave in advance or early retirement, while wanting to force companies to employ seniors on a massive scale.
At some point, you have to choose.
»
We find the same skepticism on the side of Thomas Coutrot, economist at Dares and employment specialist.
“There are relevant indexes, such as to measure gender equality.
In this specific case, we can easily compare the salaries, the positions held, the increases, ”says the specialist, but objectivity becomes more complex when moving on to seniors.
“Older people cannot or do not want to exercise certain jobs, in particular those with staggered hours, night work or heavy physical loads.
Therefore, it is difficult to imagine that displaying the threshold of seniors is relevant.
»
An index that taps aside
And since, as the saying goes, never two without three, Yannick L'Horty, professor of economics at Paris-Est and associate researcher at the Center for Employment Studies (CEE), joins the procession of critics by evoking "a false good idea in the face of a real problem".
The problem is discrimination against older people, wrongly accused of being less competent.
“It is not an index that will settle it, since the rate of seniors is not enough to know whether a company is discriminating or not.
It depends, for example, on the number of applications it receives and how it processes them.
What is needed is to monitor how interviews and CV choices are going, to carry out more operations within companies, not to display the percentage of employees by age.
»
For him, the measure could even be counter-productive: “It gives the idea that we have to force things to encourage the recruitment of seniors, that they are burdens.
However, all our studies show that the performance of a company does not depend on its age pyramid, and that having many seniors does not reduce productivity”.
Second problem according to him: the index “will be costly to set up for companies, requiring more hours of verification, control, management.
A cost that could therefore impact the recruitment of all age categories.
At best, the seniors index will be useless, at worst it will be negative for seniors,” he berates.
A measure deemed not very restrictive
Another object of criticism of the measure: its non-binding side.
For the moment, you just have to display the rate of seniors.
Having 0% does not include any penalties or fines.
Which also leaves skeptical there, starting with Philippe Martinez, leader of the CGT, who complained about the lightness of the measure on January 18: “You have to beef up your game a little!
We make rules.
In sport or for driving, when you don't apply the rules, there is a sanction.
It is only on social issues that we put indexes, indicators, but that has no consequence.
»
Thomas Coutrot evokes him, “a useless gadget, because devoid of impact.
" But even in the event of a future sanction, the economist invites us not to get carried away: "Supposing that a fine is finally given, which is far from being done, it will surely be minimal, given the resistance of the employers on this subject”
Employers as a limit
Because the Medef could not be clearer on the subject.
Its president Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux directly lit a counter-fire after the interventions of Véran and Attal.
"Beyond the impossibility of comparing companies with each other and, above all, of defining 'good' and 'bad' results, hitting companies will not stop the protests," he said. weekend.
Same very clear tone with François Asselin, the leader of the Confederation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (CPME): “Be careful not to miss the objective, by means of possibly coercive measures.
»
These are all the limits of the process according to Marc Touati: "We cannot force companies to recruit employees they do not need and do not want, just as we cannot force people who no longer want to work to do it.
»
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