Unemployment Insurance: State Council validates entry into force of new calculation

The unions had filed an appeal against the new method of calculating the unemployment allowance since 1 October. The highest administrative jurisdiction will still have to decide on the substance later.

Le Monde with AFP

The unions had filed an appeal for referred to in order to invalidate the entry into force of the unemployment insurance reform since 1 October. The Council of State rejected their appeal on Friday 22 October. It therefore validates the date of the entry into force but will decide later on the merits, that is to say about the method of calculating the unemployment indemnity – that the unions denounce as “unfair” for the applicants of Employment.
The unions had urgently obtained in June the suspension of the new implemented rules of calculating the unemployment allowance, measuring the flagship of the reform which was to come into force on July 1, the Council of State arguing “uncertainties on the economic situation “. Without waiting for the decision of the highest jurisdiction on the merits, the government had published a new decree, putting forward “the high rebound of employment since May” and allowing the entry into force of the reform on 1 October. The CFDT, the CGT, FO, the CFE-CGC and CFTC – which had abstained the previous time – had quickly indicated that they would attack the new text.

This time, the Council of State considers that “the general trend of the labor market does not constitute an obstacle to the establishment of the reform”. “This is an important reform that will encourage the work when our economy starts again”, immediately reacted the Minister of Labor, Elisabeth Borne, to the France-Press agency (AFP).

“Social disaster announced”

Folded opposite since the departure to the reform, the unions believe that the new method of calculating the daily baseline (sjr), the basis of the allowance, will penalize jobseekers alternating unemployment and activity, “the Permittents “.

In a common statement, the CGT, FSU and Solidaires indicated Friday make an appeal “against the announced social disaster”. The three unions noted that the new decree is “the conforming copy” of the preceding where “all elements demonstrating the injustice and inanity of the reform were already registered.” They felt that the Council of State “should not give in to government pressure.” The CFDT also filed its appeal on Friday, in common with the CFTC, with arguments in particular “on the fragility of the economic recovery” and on the question of “inequalities of treatment in the method of calculating the SJR”, according to the number two of the CFDT Marylise Léon.

FO, who had filed his appeal from Thursday night, has angles of attack who are “exactly the same as the last time,” Michel Beaugas said, unemployment insurance negotiator in the union. “We do not want the debate to the economic situation obscure the substantive debate on the inequity of this reform, arguments that we are already developing in 2019”, when the reform had been presented.

UNSA also filed Thursday a focused appeal, according to its Deputy Secretary General Vanessa Jereb, on the “inequity” of the daily wage of reference, the “contradictions” of the Government in its presentation of the improvement of the situation economic and “the objective” posted to combat short contracts.

/Media reports.