While the regulation enabling the implementation of the new unemployment insurance reform will be announced on July 1, 2024, the National Interprofessional Union for Employment in Industry and Commerce (Unédic) announces the revaluation of benefits for the unemployed on July 1. Unions were quick to express their disappointment at the small increase.
As of July 1, the unemployment benefit is increasing by 1.2 percent. Unédic, an association run by unions and employers, which released the information in a press release on Thursday, June 27, specified that the increase would affect “around 2 million jobseekers” out of 2.7 million people looking for work.
Unédic explains that the decision to increase this allowance was voted “by majority vote” by the representatives of the employees and employers who make it up.
In a press release issued after this decision, the CGT condemned the “extreme weakness of this revaluation” due, according to the press release, to the fact that employers “blocked its position on a 1.2% increase” while “all trade unions demanded that inflation is taken into account”.
The General Confederation of Workers regrets that “a few days before the parliamentary elections, the government and employers continue to target unemployment insurance recipients” with attitudes of “indescribable seriousness”.
In its diatribe, the union denounces what it describes as “the criminal stubbornness of employers and the government”, even though “the extreme right thrives on social despair”.
The first proposal for a revaluation of 1%
For its part, the CFDT “bitterly regrets the employer’s decision to increase unemployment benefits too little”. The press release states that “the employers proposed a 1 percent increase for the first time, and after the session was adjourned they approved only 1.2 percent.”
For his part, Unédic explains it this revaluation, which comes after two others in 2023, “takes into account both the economic context and the financial balance of the unemployment insurance system”.
In addition to the price increase of 1.9 percent on April 1, 2023 and 1.9 percent on July 1, 2023, the association reminds that the annual revaluation in the last five years was 1.68 percent.
“The increase for 2024 is estimated at 150 million euros for the unemployment insurance system,” says Unédic, who assures that in 2025 it will amount to 210 million euros.
