MOLIERE Kick Off meeting

MOLIERE Project

Kick off meeting 20-21 Jan. 2014

French context overview

20 -21 January 20141

20 -21 January 2014 MOLIERE Kick Off meeting 2

The Labour Market up to 3rd quarter 2013 : rising unemployment rate

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Reform of the Public Employment Service

- Overall objective : Improving the support delivered to unemployed people

- Law of 13th February 2008 creates « Pôle Emploi », a new structure acting as a « one stop shop »

- Pôle Emploi is a public body responsible both for unemployment benefits delivery AND job placement

20 -21 January 2014 MOLIERE Kick Off meeting 4

A profound labour market reform : the law of 14 June 2013

- Following a request from the new socialist governement, the social partners in France reached a landmark agreement on labour market reform on 11th January 2013 The latter was signed by all employer organisations and by three unions – two unions refused to sign the pact.

- The agreement was then incorporated into the Labour Code through legislation

- This very significant reform may be considered as a flexicurity agreement, a trade-off between more internal and external flexibility for employers and more new securities for workers

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Labour market reform : main points

- Extension of complementary health insurance for all employees

- Possibility to negotiate and conclude a company level agreement to preserve jobs in the event of unforeseen severe economic difficulties. (temporary adjustment of wages and working time)

- Greater predictability and legal certainty for employers : social partners at company level are now entitled to reach agreements over the procedure for collective redundancies.

- Reduction of labour market segmentation : rules (tax) to discourage the overuse of short-term contracts

- Individual training accounts : giving every person the opportunity to have a personal training account from his or her entry into the labour market until retirement / Employees keep their account if they change of employer

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Labour market reform : main points

--Period of secure voluntary mobility : In companies with 300 or more employees, an employee may be granted a ‘period of secure voluntary mobility’ to try out a job in another company

-- Reinforcement of forward-looking employment and skills management provisions : All companies will have to set up a separate database of social and economic information with a three-year forecast

-- Employees’ representatives within the board of directors : Companies with at least 10,000 employees worldwide or 5,000 in France have to guarantee two seats on the board to employees’ representatives. Representatives will have the same rights as other board members .

20 -21 January 2014 MOLIERE Kick Off meeting 6

New reform of vocational training

National cross sectoral agreement concluded on 14th december 2013

To be implemented through legislation in the near future

Two main aspects, among many others :

Reform of the financing of vocational training

Implementation of the personal training account

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