Paid leave: the government is considering partial support

The government will do everything to defuse the time bomb that is the paid vacation in hotels and restaurants.

The Minister of Labor, Élisabeth Borne, is expected, according to Les Échos, to announce this Monday the terms of a partial assumption by the State of the payment of these leaves accumulated by employees in partial unemployment.

A meeting is scheduled at the end of the day between the Minister, her counterpart delegate to SMEs, Alain Griset, as well as representatives of the sector.

To read also: Reconfinement: "It is not for companies to pay the fifth week of paid leave of their employees"

For several weeks, representatives of the sector have been sounding the alarm bells.

While their bars, hotels and restaurants are closed, their employees placed on short-time work continue to accumulate paid leave at the rate of 2.5 days per month.

The stock, already large after the first containment, has further inflated with this second imposed closure.

Some evaluations quantify the amount of these paid holidays at 150 million euros over the year, or even double.

However, the managers of the establishments say that it will be impossible for them to foot the bill when the time comes.

Read also: Should we "work a little more" and give up days of paid leave after confinement?

Élisabeth Borne recalled at the beginning of November that the accumulation of paid leave for employees on short-time work fell under an agreement reached between the social partners in 2012. The profession, which does not wish to go back on this agreement, had therefore launched other tracks.

Among them, the possibility of allowing employees in partial unemployment to take their days off during the closure of establishments, which would allow them to receive 100% of their salary.

Placement of these holidays in a time savings account (CET), exemption from employer contributions ... other proposals were on the table.

Modification of calculation rules

At this stage, believe

, the government would be ready to partially cover the cost of these holidays by modifying the rules for calculating the support of partial unemployment by the State.

There remains a major difficulty: ensuring that this aid, "

" reminds Élisabeth Borne, only concerns the hotel, café and restaurant sector.

The latter is indeed severely affected by the health crisis.

Unlike most of the businesses that were able to reopen on Saturday, restaurants and cafes remained closed.

Restaurants hope to be able to welcome the public from January 20, if the health situation allows it, while for bars, no date has yet been mentioned.

This new help for paid holidays will be added to those already announced during the weekend.

Bercy notably announced that the managers of the sector who have found another job because of the Covid crisis will be able to benefit from access to the solidarity fund for their company.

The compensation ceiling for businesses that remain closed will also be raised to 200,000 euros per month.

The professional organizations of the sector (Umih, GNI, GNC, SNRT and SNARR) welcomed a "

".