“The workers will not let themselves be done!” “Warned this weekend in a joint press release in a common front, the CFDT, the CGT, FO, the CFE-CGC and the CFTC, after having received the documents formalizing the will of François Bayrou to cut certain rights to reduce public spending.
Public holidays: will unions negotiate?
The government plans for the 2026 budget to abolish the holiday nature of Easter Monday and May 8, for employees in the private sector and the public, adding that the two days concerned can be “discussed”.
Employees “will not be remunerated more for these new hours of work” and “in return, private sector employers will pay a contribution which will be assigned to the state budget” and should bring in 4.2 billion per year, according to the document sent by Matignon.
The social partners have up to 1is September to say if they agree to negotiate on this subject, highly flammable. “No one wants to go there,” said CFTC president Cyril Chabanier in mid-July.
On Saturday, the unions have sunk the point home by warning that this subject is in their eyes contrary to the principle set out by the Labor Code to “maintain a balance and cohesion within society”.
Unemployment insurance: overflow reform?
Partners are invited to negotiate a new agreement, which will replace the one concluded in November 2024, in principle for four years, in November 1, 2026, in order to generate 2 and 2.5 billion euros in average per year.
In the viewfinder, the level of unemployment rights after a contractual termination, the minimum duration of employment to be compensated and the duration of compensation.
“For these two invitations to negotiate, we are not applicants. »»
Unemployment insurance has already been reformed three times since Emmanuel Macron’s coming to power. According to the inter -union, “no legal justification” requires a new negotiation.
The new reform targeted by the government, which takes up ideas from that desired by Gabriel Attal stopped by dissolution in 2024, would be a “total carnage for job seekers”, said in July the leader of the CFDT, Marylise Léon.
Will the CFDT be at the negotiating table?
The participation or not of the CFDT will be decisive for the holding of the two proposed negotiations. Accustomed to responding present, the first French union reserves its response this time, after several months of unsuccessful conclave on pensions.
“For these two invitations to negotiate, we are not applicants. I do not know if we are going to answer positively, “said Olivier Guivarch, national secretary of the CFDT in charge of unemployment insurance on Monday, before meetings of his bodies at the end of August and mid-September.
In mid-July, the union had deemed the abolition of two public holidays “unacceptable”. Likewise, “ask the social partners to reform for the fourth time since 2017 the unemployment insurance plan […] is a total nonsense ”, according to the CFDT.
On August 26, the power plant will hold its union start to the Paris Labor Stock Exchange. He invited François Bayrou and the Minister of Labor Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet.
A strike and mobilization in the street?
At the end of July, the secretary general of FO Frédéric Souillot wrote to François Bayrou to inform him that his union filed a strike notice from September 1 to November 30 against his “budgetary measures”.
The set of eight union centers (CFDT, CGT, FO, CFE-CGC, CFTC, UNSA, FSU, Solidaires) also launched a petition to say “no to the Bayrou budget”, which collected Tuesday 318,000 signatures.
“No one wants to go there. »»
September 1 must be held an inter-union which “will be important because it could determine a possible action, perhaps unanimous reactions and responses”, explains Olivier Guivarch.
All in a context already electrified by call initiated on social networks – outside the party or union – to “block everything” on September 10. Several Federations of the CGT, including that of chemistry, have already planned to join it.