Badaboum.
Despite the surge in Covid-19 contaminations, the financial sanctions supposed to bring recalcitrant employers to telecommuting will wait.
After the trench warfare led by Republican-majority senators, who discarded the government amendment carrying this administrative fine of up to 1,000 euros per employee, a measure desired by the Minister of Labor, Elisabeth Borne, a new soap opera opens.
The transition to the Joint Joint Committee (CMP) – which brings together deputies and senators in order to try to agree on a common version of the text on the vaccine pass failed this Thursday, January 13.
After more than four hours of meeting… and a tweet posted at 5:45 p.m. from the boss of senators LR Bruno Retailleau evoking a “victory of common sense” of his people when the meeting was not over.
"An intolerable attack" on the functioning of Parliament denounced the president of the Law Commission of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet.
Little support for Borne among senators
The bill will therefore go back to a new reading in both chambers, with a view to its final adoption.
What will Matignon and the Ministry of Labor do, when the text must be represented on Friday?
According to our information, the “principle” of an administrative financial penalty should be restored.
But this rebound risks causing a new delay in the application of the measures, while the examination of the whole text had already been postponed for a week at the beginning of January.
But the government still hopes that the text will come into force next week.
Faced with the fire of right-wing senators, this Wednesday, Elisabeth Borne found herself very much alone to defend the measure of financial sanctions.
Very hard debates during which the Minister of Labor found no support, even in the ranks of left-wing senators who were nevertheless concerned about employees.
"It is not a question of interfering in the organization of companies but of sanctioning the behavior of those who deliberately refuse to take preventive measures", she had tried to convince, without success, the Senate having removed the government amendment introducing fines.
Little change since mid-December
This Thursday morning, a few hours before the CMP, Laurent Berger (CFDT) came to his rescue. “A certain number of employers do not play the game” on telework, it is necessary that “the sanctions apply”, claimed on France Info the secretary general of the CFDT. Since January 3, teleworking has once again become the rule at least three days a week for positions that lend themselves easily to it. An “obligation” set by Prime Minister Jean Castex in order to limit the circulation of Delta and Omicron variants.
Except that many employers have remained deaf to his call despite the outbreak of contamination.
A Harris Interactive poll commissioned by the Ministry of Labor shows that since this date (between January 3 and 9) the use of telework has hardly changed compared to mid-December.
The effort was confined to only employers who had already taken the lead before the holidays, granting more telework days (the number of days fell from 3 to 3.3 between mid-December and the week of January 3) .