The management of the French carmaker Renault and four union organizations (CFDT, CFTC, CFE-CGC and FO) signed a "social crisis agreement" aimed at saving "8.000-10.000 jobs in France in 2009." The agreement establishes a system to maintain employees' net pay during partial unemployment, mobilizing days granted for working time reduction and calling some categories of employees, notably executives, for solidarity. Likewise, on April 6, PSA Peugeot Citroën signed an agreement with five trade unions (CFE-CGC, CFDT, CFTC, FO and GSEA) on "training and compensation during partial unemployment." This way, the social partners are hoping to save 2.800 jobs. (Ref. 090403)

Renault: maintain employees’ net pay during partial unemployment and solidarity system. The agreement is aimed at maintaining the jobs of people employed by Renault in France (Renault SAS) throughout the system – from April 1 to December 31, 2009. The text was negotiated with French union organizations during four meetings in February and March. The CFE-CGC, CFTC, CFDT and FO signed the text but the CGT rejected it. The agreement maintains jobs via appeal to partial unemployment and saves skills with an increased effort in terms of training and net remuneration for employees during partial unemployment. It is based on “solidarity and equal treatment, associating the contributions of the company and of the employees under the form of days put on a special crisis fund or monetized or State-funded.”

• Maintaining after-tax remuneration. The established to maintain employees’ after-tax remuneration during partial unemployment mobilizes the working time reduction days granted to employees individually (“individual time capital”), i.e. days they can “book” depending on their needs, unlike working time reduction days, determined collectively. Thus, an employee with five days of partial unemployment will keep his net salary if he agrees to give up one working time reduction day.
• Special crisis funds. In addition, the agreement organizes internal solidarity, asking executives and employees, technicians and supervisors (ETAM) when placed under a fixed rate, to fuel a “special crisis fund” – by putting 1/5th of individual working time reduction days for each day of partial unemployment. The fund also compensates workers and ETAMs without a fixed rate for every idle day. Thus, for these employees, the possibility to maintain 100% of their net remuneration is allowed by mobilizing State payment and collective agreements, up to 64%. 16% come from the crisis management fund and 20% from individual working time reduction days. However, buying these days back is optional: employees can decide to complete remuneration up to 100% by buying back one individual working time reduction day for five idle days.
• Implementation and follow-up. Partial unemployment can affect production as well as engineering and services. It can be organized in the company or the sector (management, workshop, service) and have different forms: one day per week, full week or site closure. The management commits to exchange regularly, notably through a central follow-up commission, with the trade unions. It will notably meet in the event of legal, regulatory or conventional changes to the compensation of partial unemployment and ensure the follow-up of the agreement.

PSA Peugeot Citroën: maintaining after-tax pay via training during partial unemployment. On April 6, the group signed an agreement with five union organizations (CFE-CGC, CFDT, CFTC, FO and GSEA) on “training and compensation during partial unemployment.” The objective of the agreement is to compensate up to 100% employees sent to partial unemployment while attending training. With this agreement, the social partners think that they will save 2.800 jobs. Besides, in 2009, training effort will be increased of 30% compared with 2008.

• Training. With this agreement, the group intends to collectively train, by shifts, its employees to lean production during partial unemployment. Such vocational training corresponds to a necessary training toll to develop skills, which should be started and therefore anticipated. The training module is 70 hours and must improve employees’ “internal employability” by increasing their professional skills and their “external employability” with a certification by the training organization, allowing them to give value to continuous training on the labor market.
• Compensation. The beneficiaries will be designated in shifts for idle days. They will get 100% of their after-tax salary if they attend all 70 training hours (justified absences included). This is obtained thanks to the benefits for training outside of work paid for by the group and the partial unemployment benefits granted by the public powers.
• Follow-up. The management and unions agreed to meet before July 1, 2009 within a follow-up committee. Before the first meeting, unions will receive “summary documents”. The signatories agreed to meet against in September 2010 at the latest to evaluate the company’s action and determine possible evolutions to the entire system.

Planet Labor, April 14, 2009, No. 090403 – www.planetlabor.com