Energy crisis: partial activity resurfaces

Will the government have to reactivate partial activity on a large scale as it did during the Covid epidemic? After the Arques and Duralex glassmakers , it is the turn of the founder Aluminum Dunkerque or the manager of swimming pools Vert Marine to partially or totally lower the curtain, weighed down by soaring energy prices. With each time hundreds of jobs at risk. Problem: since 1^er August, the system, which consists of having part of the remuneration of the employees concerned covered by the State and Unédic, causes them to lose up to 40% of their gross and leaves a remainder of 40% to be paid for the employer.

The subject is obviously being debated within the executive. At Bercy, we rule out returning to a more generous derogatory regime, arguing that the government has set up aid “so that companies continue to produce, not so that they close”. On the side of the Ministry of Labour, on the other hand, we are not closing the door. “We are looking with the services if our partial activity system is well suited”, says one in the entourage of the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt.

Massive weapon against layoffs during the pandemic , partial activity affected up to 8.3 million people in April 2020, at the height of the first confinement (4.6 million full-time equivalents), according to the Ministry of Labor. The protected workforce has since decreased to the point of only affecting 125,000 employees in May, the last known figure.

For FO and CGT, it’s 100%

If the social catastrophe was avoided, it did not go without forcing governments to juggle with the rates of care according to the rebounds of the epidemic. Today, all companies are in the same boat: the employee receives 60% of his gross remuneration (100% at the minimum wage) within the limit of 4.5 times the minimum wage, his employer being reimbursed only at height of 36%.

Insufficient for the unions. FO is claiming zero loss of income, better than what was going on for companies closed administratively because of the Covid. Same story at the CGT. “It is all the more essential that employees cannot be penalized by strategic choices of companies that are not always justified”, she develops through the voice of Catherine Perret.

On the employer side, the CPME is not to be outdone. The organization pleads for going well beyond the basic regulatory framework for “energy-dependent” companies. Medef, him, did not engage. In line with its desire not to return to “whatever the cost”, the employers’ organization is satisfied at this stage with targeted aid to reduce the energy bill, the relaxation of which Bruno Le Maire announced on Tuesday.