How the standoff over arduous work complicates pension reform

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By: Dominique Baillard Follow

In France, deputies have started examining the pension reform bill. This Tuesday, February 18, the social partners are meeting to discuss its funding. In each instance, a big subject continues to be blocked: that of the consideration of arduousness.

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Today in France, around 3,000 people retire earlier in the name of arduousness, out of a total of 800,000 departures. Or 0.3% of assets. A tiny proportion. So why so much noise and fury around the arduousness?

The current government believed to get rid of this complex subject by simplifying the device carried by the CFDT and set up under François Hollande to measure the arduousness. Thus, the criteria giving right to an early departure became very restrictive, too much for the union. For example, neither loggers nor movers are recognized as arduous professions. The CFDT therefore demands compensation at the time of retirement for those who work the hardest. One way to redress the inequality of opportunity in the face of death. The probability of living beyond the age of 60 is two times lower among workers than among managers.

How do boss representatives react ?

The bosses are divided. Medef does not want to hear about it, believing that this amounts to reintroducing special regimes in a reform which aims to eliminate them. These plans have the major disadvantage of being expensive for the community. Basically, it is for a question of money that Medef refuses for the moment to open the right to early departure to those who have worked in a difficult job. Because if the number of pensioners concerned is anecdotal today, it will change in the coming years.

In fact, the Pensions Orientation Council plans a large increase in this type of pensions. This increase will of course be amplified if the definition of the criteria is broadened. On the other hand, the small bosses are more sensitive to the arguments of the CFDT. The craftsmen and the self-employed, represented by the CPME and by the union of local businesses, want better consideration of the arduousness because some of their members exercise themselves arduous trades.

What are the options on the table to relieve people working in these trades?

There is a prevention component in the pension reform project. The dedicated fund of 100 million euros taken from health insurance should be doubled. The reform also provides for a retraining component, a six-month leave accompanied by training for those who can no longer or do not want to take on exhausting work. However, its financing has not yet been defined. Finally, on the retirement side, the CFDT proposes that a list of professions be established to better cover reality. Again, full suspense on the key question: who should pay? Do only the sectors concerned have to contribute more? Or will this particular right rest on all companies? Without answers to these questions, the conference on pension funding, which begins today, could come to a halt. In any case, this is what the CFDT, the only union that openly supports the universal system established by the reform, suggests.

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• French politics
• France