Badaboum. Despite the surge in Covid-19 contaminations, the financial sanctions supposed to bring recalcitrant employers to teleworking will wait. After the trench warfare led by the Republican-majority senators, who scrapped the government amendment bringing this administrative fine to an amount of up to 1,000 euros per employee, a measure desired by the Minister of Labor, Elisabeth Borne, a new soap opera opens.
The passage in joint committee parity (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 pm from the boss of senators LR Bruno Retailleau evoking a “victory of common sense” of his people while the meeting was not over. “An intolerable attack” to the functioning of Parliament denounced the president of the Laws Commission of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet.
Little support for Borne among the senators
The bill will therefore be re-read in both chambers, with a view to its final adoption. What are Matignon and the Ministry of Labor going to 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 further delay in the application of the measures, while the examination of the whole of the text had already been postponed for a week at the beginning of January. But the government is still hoping for the text to come into force next week.
In front of the fire of the right-wing senators, this Wednesday, Élisabeth Borne found herself 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 are concerned regarding 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 suppressed the government amendment introducing fines.
Little change since mid-December
This Thursday morning, a few hours before the CMP, Laurent Berger (CFDT) flew to his aid. “A certain number of employers do not play the game” on teleworking, it is necessary that “the sanctions apply”, claimed on France Info the secretary general of the CFDT. Since January 3, teleworking has become the rule once more 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 the Delta and Omicron variants.
Except that many employers have remained deaf to his call despite the surge in 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 the only employers who had already taken the lead before the holidays, allowing more days of telework (the number of days fell from 3 to 3.3 between mid-December and the week of January 3) .
