What is France Travail, the organization that will replace Pôle Emploi?

Full employment goal. The government presents a bill on Wednesday 7 June which should give birth to France Travail, the successor of the Pôle emploi. The idea is to achieve full employment, i.e. an unemployment rate of around 5% in 2027 (against 7.1% today) by targeting people far from employment. Starting with the beneficiaries of RSA who have benefited little from the drop in unemployment, their number being stable since 2017, around 1.8 million.

In this context, the creation of France Travail, by 1 January 2025 at the latest, aims to better coordinate the actors of the public employment service, which is more fragmented than in other European countries. It is about having the same entry procedure for all people looking for work or facing integration difficulties, no matter which door they knock on.

The idea is that those who apply for RSA at the CAF are simultaneously enrolled in France Travail, while today only 40% of RSA beneficiaries are at Pôle emploi. The public operator and all the actors (local missions for young people, Cap emploi for the disabled, but also local authorities, etc.) will have to work better in the network with connected systems. Pôle emploi will be called France Travail and will be the main operator of this network. “It is not a question of having an institutional big bang but of playing collectively”, summarized Elisabeth Borne, while some elected officials denounce, such as the Regions of France, “a recentralization project”.

A support course

This automatic registration with France Travail, based on common criteria, will allow “rapid entry into the support course” and “visibility on all people looking for work in a territory”, underlines-t-we in Matignon. Each member of France Travail will sign “a contract of commitment”. It is in this context that the renewed support for RSA beneficiaries is being tested in 18 departments with the delicate issue of 15-20 hours of work per week. Not formally sanctioned by law, these hours (dives, updates, CV writing, etc.) will be an “adapted” goal for everyone, said Olivier Dussopt. It will not be “neither free work nor compulsory voluntary work”, he repeated in the face of the fears of the associations that fight against poverty. For the Minister of Labour, “what is wrong is the support. 350,000 recipients have not followed up and we are not free from our duty of solidarity with 607 euros” (note, RSA for one person only).

In a survey released earlier this year, 61% of RSA recipients said they had a “professional or social help need” that was not being met.

Sanctions easier to implement

In this “logic of rights and duties”, the bill facilitates the implementation of sanctions for recipients who fail to fulfill their obligations. Faced with the ax of a radiation – little applied – the councilor will now be able, unless opposed by the president of the departmental council, to suspend the payment of the RSA in the event of default, with a retroactive regularization when the person respects his commitments.

The government wants to “subject the beneficiaries of the RSA to the same control as the unemployed”, “it deeply stigmatizes them”, denounced Sophie Binet (CGT) while for Marylise Léon (CFDT), the conditionality of the RSA “is a red line”. There will be “additional means” to strengthen support, assured Olivier Dussopt, referring to the discussions on the next budget. The report that prefigured the reform quantified its cost “between 2 and 2.5 billion euros cumulatively until 2027”.

The text, which will be examined for the first time in the Senate at the beginning of July, consists of two other parts: one on disability, which aims to improve access for people with disabilities to work in the ordinary environment and the other on small childhood that recognizes the municipalities as “organisers” of hospitality, with the mission of identifying needs, informing families and building the offer.