2023-06-07 17:41:00
On the occasion of the presentation in the Council of Ministers of the France Travail bill, the Minister of Labour, Olivier Dussopt, had a new opportunity to defend one of his measures, however controversial: the reform of the active solidarity income (RSA). Stated objective: to promote the return to employment by targeting people who are the furthest from it in order to achieve full employment, i.e. an unemployment rate of around 5% in 2027, once morest 7.1% currently.
Because despite the sharp drop in unemployment in recent years and labor shortages in many sectors, the number of RSA beneficiaries has hardly decreased since 2017, around 1.9 million. With the reform planned under the bill, they will all be automatically registered with France Travail, the successor to Pôle emploi which should see the light of day no later than January 1, 2025. More specifically, the idea is that a person applying for RSA at the family allowance fund (CAF) finds himself at the same time registered with France Travail.
In general, the objective of this general overhaul marked by the creation of France Travail is to better coordinate the actors of the public employment service characterized “by its atomicity and complexity”, explained Olivier Dussopt. In this context, it is a question of having the same entry procedure for all people looking for work or encountering integration difficulties, regardless of the door they knock on. To do this, the public operator and all the actors (local missions for young people, Cap emploi for the disabled, but also local authorities, etc.) will have to work better in a network with connected systems. A network headed by Pôle emploi, which has become France Travail. Far from an institutional big bang – each keeping their skills – it is a question of “collective play”according to Elisabeth Borne, while some elected officials denounce, like Regions of France, a “recentralizing project”.
15 to 20 hours of compulsory activities per week
But the flagship measure brandished by the Minister of Labor is to condition this aid to 15 to 20 hours of compulsory integration activities per week. With automatic registration for France Travail, the State will have “visibility on all people looking for work in a territory”. A course that will go through the signature of each registered with France Travail of a “reciprocal commitment contract” with his adviser. This contract, which “has existed since the creation of the RMI in 1988”according to the Minister of Labour, will now include 15 to 20 hours of work per week.
The latter, dedicated to immersion, upgrading, CV writing, etc., are however not formally enshrined in law. They will be a goal “adapted” everyone, said Olivier Dussopt. It won’t be “neither free work nor compulsory volunteering”, he repeated in the face of the fears of associations fighting once morest poverty, as he had already assured on May 23. For the Minister of Labour, what fishes, it is the accompaniment. 350,000 recipients have no follow-up and we are not left with our duty of solidarity with 607 euros [montant du RSA pour une personne seule, ndlr] ».
Wanting to be reassuring, he assured that “we are working with Pôle emploi – which will become France Travail – on this question of the categories of job seekers registered with Pôle emploi”because the registration of 100% of recipients (of the RSA) will require “that some of them are registered in categories exempt from job search”. Category D concerns, for example, people who are unemployed, who are not immediately available, and who are not required to perform positive job search actions (job seekers in training, sick, etc. ). Because, for some, this search is de facto “nearly impossible, if not totally impossible” for reasons including “excessively difficult health or integration paths”justified the minister, adding that “we are working on this, it has not been completed because it is an internal reflection on the operator that is Pôle emploi and what will be France Travail”.
Penalties for refusing to work
Recipients will therefore also have duties and obligations that they will have to respect under penalty of sanctions that the bill makes easier to implement. “I confirm that in the bill, there will be the possibility of suspending, for a short period perhaps to start, in any case there will also be a system of sanctions, once we have accomplished, on our side, our share of responsibility, that is to say that we will have put the beneficiary of the RSA in a position to follow the course that we have proposed to him “, had already confirmed on May 13, Elisabeth Borne. However, she was more evasive on the deadline for the implementation of these sanctions. This possibility will arise when“we will have solved the other preliminary problems”THE “peripheral brakes” back to work, she said.
Concretely, before the ax of a radiation – little applied – the adviser will now be able, unless opposed by the president of the departmental council, to suspend the payment of the RSA in the event of breach, with a retroactive regularization when the person respects his commitments once more.
“A serious breach of our Republic”
This decision is highly criticized by the unions. The new secretary general of the CGT, Sophie Binet, has thus denounced the fact that the government wants “submit RSA recipients to the same control as the unemployed”estimating that “It stigmatizes them deeply”. For her part, Marylise Léon of the CFDT, recalled that the conditionality of the RSA is “a red line”. “The greatest stigma is keeping people in precariousness”replied Olivier Dussopt.
The unions are not the only ones to denounce the reform of the RSA. If the device is already tested in 18 departments, including the North, Eure, Aisne, Creuse, Aveyron, Loire-Atlantique or even that of Reunion, the only overseas , a nineteenth gave up the experiment. Indeed, the department of Seine-Saint-Denis withdrew from the list on March 27, explaining that it refused the logic of “conditionality of aid”. “The doctrine supported by the government in terms of the conditionality of social aid (…) seems to me to be a serious breach of our Republic”, had thus justified the PS president of the Departmental Council Stéphane Troussel in a letter to Olivier Dussopt sent to AFP. In the fight once morest poverty, “the RSA is a fundamental social right, which cannot be earned by any commitment to intensive support (…). Putting everyone to work, whatever the cost, cannot be the sole and priority objective of public policies.he added.
In an attempt to ease tensions, the executive argues that, to strengthen support, “additional means” will be implemented, as assured Olivier Dussopt this Wednesday, while referring to the discussions on the next budget. The report prefiguring the reform quantified its cost “between 2 and 2.5 billion euros cumulatively until 2027”. A part might be financed from the unemployment insurance budget.
The text, which will be examined in the Senate at the beginning of July, has two other sections: one on disability, which aims to improve the access of people with disabilities to employment in the ordinary environment, and the other on early childhood, which recognizes municipalities like “organizing authorities” reception, with the mission of identifying needs, informing families and constructing the offer.
1686164592
#Olivier #Dussopt #defends #reform #RSA
