Faced with questions about the employment of seniors in France while the pension reform plans to raise the legal retirement age from 62 to 64, the government has given some leads on measures to encourage and promote employment seniors. Sanctions will be taken, assured the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt.

The postponement of the legal retirement age, from 62 to 64, is one of the central points of the pension reform presented by the government. The announcement of this postponement (coupled with a faster transition to 43 years of contribution from 2027 instead of 2035) has led to many questions about the employment of seniors in France, with the specter of unemployment during the last years of active life and as a consequence a reduction in retirement pensions.

Faced with these doubts and questions, the government tried to reassure this Monday, January 23 during the presentation of the reform project in the Council of Ministers, a point prior to the arrival of the text on the benches of the National Assembly in February. Labor Minister Olivier Dussopt gave some details on Monday, assuring that a “senior employment index” would be created by the end of 2023 for all companies with more than 300 employees. Sanctions will be taken up to a fine equivalent to 1% of the payroll for companies that do not set up this index and do not publish it.

This announcement roughly resumes the principle of the already existing sanctions for companies that do not publish an index of professional equality between men and women. Relaunched, Olivier Dussopt added that the question of the employment of seniors should be “a subject of negotiations in companies”. We will then have to look at how companies evolve, “he concluded.