Reclassification of redundant economic workers: trends and good practices ; Reclassement des salariés licenciés économiques : velléités et bonnes pratiques

Abstract

The outplacement scheme available to an economically dismissed employee depends on the total number of employees employed by the undertaking that employs them: depending on whether it is small or large, the employee's choice is therefore limited to accepting or refusing to comply with the provisions laid down by law, the Replacement Leave or the Professional Securing Agreement (CSP). This inequality has great consequences as these two systems are very different. On the one hand, the CSP protects the unemployed person well and increases his chances of being reclassified. On the other hand, the Reclassification Leave is an outdated arrangement based on a priori, nobody checking the reality of which the State has been following or financing for a long time, a leap in the unknown to the employee. The introduction of the conventional break in 2008 and the recent reform of unemployment insurance further complicated the choice between the options available to these employees. We highlight here the inequalities in information, rights and financial security, which are binding on those workers who are in the process of being made redundant and who depend neither on their profile nor on their behaviour, but only on the status of their employer and on inconsistent regulations. Simple reforms could restore fairness and increase the chances of reclassification following economic redundancy. At the very least, the aim would be to standardise the procedures and parameters of the two existing arrangements, or simply to open up a right of option so that all economic licensees who so wish could opt for the CSP, irrespective of the size of the undertaking employing them, which would not incur any additional costs. A more ambitious reform could be to generalise PESCO with funding for the employee's support from the employer. Such an abundance would replace the budgets currently invested by the company in the system it had to put in place ex nihilo, and could depend on the ability to pay of the company whose size is only one aspect. ...