1. Presentation of the draft bill of the Ministry of Work, Employment, Professional Training and Social Dialogue

2. Great disparities between
security and flexibility in the first draft
The CFDT, CFE-CGC and CFTC have obtained the report on the presentation of the text that took place in the Council of Ministers in order to ensure that consultation is carried out with the trade unions.
They have also succeeded in putting forward their counterproposals and have achieved:
The eradication of the unreasonable upper limit on payouts in the event of redundancies
The creation of new rights: Personal Activity Account
The CFDT applied substantial pressure in order to ensure that important changes were made to this text and put forward 52 proposals to redraft this, in order to guarantee:
Social Dialogue in all companies
the safeguarding of employees’ professional development
the removal of any provisions likely to facilitate mass, financially-motivated redundancies
4th – 7th April : The document put forward by the minister Myriam El Khomri is to be examined by the commissions of the French National Assembly.
The CFDT is of the opinion that this draft bill still needs to be modified. We are closely monitoring the amendments being put forward by the Members of Parliament.

3. CHANGES MADE to the first draft
Working time: preservation of current rights in the absence of a company or sectoral agreement
Withdrawal of the possibility for employers to unilaterally establish a fixed daily rate (regardless of the number of hours worked) in companies with less than 50 workers.
Reduction in possibility for the employers of companies with less than 50 workers to unilaterally decide to change working time (transition from 16 to 9 weeks)
Removal of the employers’ unilateral power: in the absence of a shop steward, a worker could be mandated by a trade union to negotiate on working time.
For on-call workers: the compulsory 11 hour rest period every 24 hours will not be split.
Maximum weekly working time stays the same at 46 hours per week for 12 consecutive weeks
The organisation of working time over a reference period exceeding one year will depend on the conclusion of a sectoral agreement
Young people
Removal of provision allowing young apprentices (under the age of 18) to work 40 hours per week and 10 hours per day
Roll-out of the Youth Guarantee in 2017: contract made between young people in difficulty and local organisations (support, financial assistance of 461€/month)

4. CHANGES MADE to the first draft
Severance pay rates
Abolition of upper limit for damages in the case of unfair dismissals
Replacement of the upper limit with an indicative scale, subject to decision by the judge
Personal Activity Account: improvements achieved by the CFDT
Rights are linked to the individual rather than to their status within the company (benefitting private-sector employees). It is our hope that these rights will also eventually be extended to civil servants and to self-employed workers.
This account will contain a Learning Account and a so-called ‘Ardous Work’ Account (this demand was made by the CFDT in 2003).
Ability to make decisions regarding one’s own career path and life (work/life balance)
Tailored, comprehensive support throughout one’s career
Right to training or ‘second chance education’ for young people who have dropped out of the education system
Consolidation through the creation of the ‘Civic Participation Account’ which recognises the hours worked by volunteers, equivalent to 20 hours per year.
The CFDT also aims to create a working time account within this account, thereby enabling workers to organise their time as they wish.

5. Changes that still need to be made!
Redundancies: provisions which are weakening the workers’ position
The draft bill redefines the rules surrounding redundancies so that, from now onwards, it is foreseen that the financial difficulties of a company belonging to a multinational group will only be assessed in France, and the financial health of the other subsidiaries within the group, which are based overseas and which are operating in the same sector, will not be taken into account.
Review the evaluation criteria on company difficulties in cases of redundancies : a drop in turnover or in order values over the course of at least 4 trimesters, or operational losses over the course of at least 1 semester, will be sufficient grounds to justify mass redundancies, for example.
The CFDT demands that these provisions be corrected!