Should wages be tied to rising prices? The question arises once again as many French people find it increasingly difficult to end the month. The rise in food prices amounts to 10% in one year and that of energy to 18%, recalls Le Monde, while wages do not increase as quickly… Should we return to indexation? wages on inflation, which has disappeared since the 1980s?
Quoted by the evening daily, the CGT is asking for “a mechanism for automatically increasing salary scales and retirement pensions on inflation. With immediate repercussions in all branches”. Only the Smic is currently indexed to inflation and that is why it has been revalued four times since the beginning of the year. What about low wages, barely higher than the minimum income, and which are not increasing?
In addition to the CGT, several political figures are also calling for the indexation of wages to inflation, so that the rise in prices observed for several months is offset by wage increases. Invited on BFMTV earlier this week, MP Fabien Roussel, leader of the Communists, indicated that he had tabled a bill favoring the sliding scale of salaries.
The indexation of wages to inflation was commonplace until 1983 and its final abolition, because it could itself contribute to the increase in inflation. If France has abandoned this way of doing things, this is not the case for some of our neighbors: Belgium and Luxembourg, for example, still have a mechanism for indexing salaries, explains Le Monde. It remains to be seen on whom the government wants to weigh the rise in prices: companies (by indexing wages to inflation) or the French, by changing nothing? Social peace has a price and it may be that of indexation…
