Career changes: employers and unions reach an agreement

Employers and several unions announced on the evening of Wednesday, June 25, that they had reached an agreement to facilitate career change, following a month-long "flash" negotiation. This agreement was sought by the government, which hopes to incorporate it into a bill focusing in particular on the employment of older workers.

During the last discussion session on June 16, the negotiations stalled and the unions criticized the employers' negotiating method.

The conclusion of an agreement on professional retraining, desired by the executive to be included in a bill also covering the employment of senior citizens, is a good point for social dialogue after the failure of the conclave on pensions , which weakens the Bayrou government.

"We have an agreement that makes sense in the way it reorganizes the retraining mechanisms in a slightly more modern way, but with an ambition that is completely measured because we are in a budgetary framework that is super constrained," declared CFDT negotiator Yvan Ricordeau just after the end of the session. "The CFDT is not going to say that we are going to change planets on retraining when it will not be what we had imagined a few months ago," he added, putting the scope of the agreement into perspective, just like the other union representatives.

Yvan Ricordeau indicated that the national office of the first union will be held on Friday and that he will defend the text, but that it is also necessary to take into account the "context" , "no one being able to know too much what might happen tomorrow (Thursday) on the arbitrations on the question of pensions" .

"The pension effect played a full role" because there was "a very strong desire on the part of the employers to reach an agreement" , analysed the representative of the CFE-CGC Jean-François Foucard, who considered the agreement "signable" while adding that he did not know when his organisation would make a decision.

"There are no new rights, but we haven't lost any," said FO negotiator Michel Beaugas. The CPF (personal training account ) "remains in the hands of the employee; each time they will have to give their opinion" on their mobilization to finance training, and in the context of internal mobility within their company, "they will not be able to give all of their CPF, but only 50%," he explained.

"Many of our demands are included" in the agreement, according to the FO leader, who nevertheless specified that he was "unable to say whether we would be signatories or not."

The CFTC said through its negotiator Aline Mougenot that it will present the agreement to the confederal council with "a rather favorable opinion" after having notably obtained that it be recorded in the text that "the employee gives his agreement for an external reconversion" so that the reconversion cannot be used as a disguised dismissal.

The CGT, on the other hand, although it did not vote for the text to be rejected, once again severely criticised the employers' "very tough" negotiating method and the government's desire to reach a rapid conclusion when "the issue would have deserved longer negotiations" , according to the negotiator from the Montreuil union, Sandrine Mourey.

She acknowledged, however, that the talks had made progress, but said that "the final text would have been a good starting text for the negotiations."

Finally, Medef negotiator Hubert Mongon welcomed an agreement allowing "training to be put at the service of employment" .