No fewer than eleven appointments on the agenda! The new Prime Minister, Jean Castex, and Elisabeth Borne, recently appointed Minister of Labor, started this Thursday morning and until Friday afternoon a marathon of meetings with the social partners. Each organization in turn paraded in Matignon.
As for employee unions, the position of the CFDT, Force Ouvrière, the CFTC and the CGT is unanimous: at a time of the worst recession expected in France since 1945, we must focus on employment. Pensions are "not the subject of summer and fall," said Laurent Berger, number 1 of the CFDT. For those who, moreover, support a universal pension scheme, this thorny reform must not "pollute the issue of recovery". According to Yves Veyrier, secretary general of FO, opposed to the project, "this is really not the time" to talk about pensions, while the president of the Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises (CPME), François Asselin, believes that " you have to go into pause mode ”.
Even Medef proposes to soften the calendar
But the Elysee Palace does not hear this and wants to reopen discussions immediately. “We are resuming the reform where it was before the health crisis. The President of the Republic trusts the Prime Minister, known for his ability to make people work together, to find a satisfactory consensus ", we said at the Elysée Palace, where we said that" the question of a State Secretariat dedicated to pensions is not yet decided ”. Laurent Pietraszewski, the “Mr. Retraites” of the previous government will wait a few more days to be fixed on his fate…
As for Jean Castex, he will have to show great strength of conviction because even on the side of the employers' organization of the Medef, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux proposes to soften the calendar: "Let’s talk at the start of the school year, but with figures . According to Cyril Chabanier, the president of the Christian union CFTC, the Prime Minister will once again receive the social partners "for a social conference" on July 17. The CGT has another agenda: barely an hour after its secretary general Philippe Martinez was received in Matignon, it called the demonstration and the strike in two months, on September 17.