Muriel Pénicaud will undoubtedly remain the flagship minister at the start of the five-year period, setting to music the main social campaign measures of candidate Macron.
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The ordinances for reforming the labor code from the start of the 2017 school year, after a concerted process during the two summer months? It was her.
The reform in the summer of 2018 of vocational training and apprenticeship, which completely reshuffled the funding cards and the sharing of responsibilities between the various actors in the field? It was still her.
The forceps review in the summer of 2019 of unemployment insurance compensation rules, after the breakdown of negotiations between unions and employers who had been unable to agree on a volume of savings to be made ? It was over and over again ...
Better, in three years Rue de Grenelle, the ex-HRD of the Danone group, who directed Business France just before joining the government Philippe succeeded in bringing unemployment down almost to its pre-crisis level of 2008, with a rate of 7.8% in all of France (excluding Mayotte) noted at the end of the first quarter, i.e. 1.7 points lower than in mid-2017. Job creation, under his leadership, has soared to the point of exceeding 600,000 new jobs in the public and private sectors over ten consecutive quarters.
Muriel Pénicaud is also the minister who implemented another strong campaign promise from candidate Macron: the drastic reduction in the number of subsidized contracts, particularly in the public, which were divided by more than two after the election of Emmanuel Macron, angering local elected officials to whom the pool of cheap labor has been cut.
Communication hiccups
However, this good record was swept away by the health crisis, which blew up all the social indicators, particularly in terms of unemployment.
Muriel Pénicaud is also at the origin of some blunders or hiccups that placed her in the viewfinder of the Élysée Palace: the abolition of tax assistance for the over 70s - which had forced Edouard Philippe to correct it publicly at the National Assembly - or the refusal to lengthen the period of leave for parents confronted with the mourning of a child - who had brought Emmanuel Macron out of his reserve himself ...