Workers get paid to ‘stay home’ under Macron plan
FRANCE: President Macron has been accused of encouraging laziness after promising to give unemployment benefits worth up to €74,400 (NZ$122,700) a year to people who stop working and adopt a new lifestyle.
Critics predict tens of thousands of French employees will leave their posts as a result, and that the reform could bankrupt the already indebted welfare state.
During the presidential election campaign, Macron said workers would have the right to resign and claim a benefit once every five years. However, he backtracked slightly at the weekend, saying this might be once every ‘‘five, six or seven years’’.
A leaked labour ministry report says the scheme will cost €14 billion in the first year as workers take the chance for a change of lifestyle. It will cost about €5b a year thereafter.
France, like many other European countries, has a benefit system far more generous than Britain’s. The unemployed receive benefits that, on average, are equivalent to 71 per cent of their salary for two years, up to a maximum of €74,400 a year. After that the payments fall sharply. The benefits are available to those who lose their jobs if, for instance, their employers go bankrupt.
Macron wants to extend the payouts to anyone who chooses to stop working. His aim is to encourage a fluid labour market in which people switch companies and careers.
His detractors say the plan will merely encourage the French to abandon work in favour of lazy days at home. With the unemployment benefit system already running an annual deficit of €3.5b, and debts of €34b, they add, France can ill afford Macron’s new right to leisure.
Xavier Bertrand, a leading member of the opposition CentreRight Republicans party, said the promise of money for nothing would entice up to 800,000 workers to leave their jobs in the first year of the scheme. ‘‘Afterwards the figure will descend to a range situated between 170,000 and 250,000 people.’’
The cost would be prohibitive, he said. ‘‘The survival of the unemployment benefit system is at stake.’’
The government has rejected the claims, saying it will balance the outlay on the new scheme with stricter controls on people who are unemployed and who refuse to take up job offers. After three refusals, they will lose their benefits, it insists.
Macron is promoting the extension of unemployment benefit to counter claims he has lurched to the Right since his election in May. His promise to abolish wealth tax while making it cheaper for companies to lay off staff have angered Left-wing voters. He hopes that his latest plans will lure them back.
In an attempt to reduce the cost of the measure the centrist president said workers would need to present a ‘‘personal project’’ to claim benefits when they resigned their jobs, and show they had plans to move into a new career.