Social dialogue: Pressure surges | L’Economiste

Meetings between the Head of Government and the social partners are continuing. After the UMT and UGTM workers unions, a meeting was scheduled with the CGEM employers’ union on Tuesday April 18 and with the CDT workers union on Thursday April 20. This year, employers find themselves in a rather special situation. The duo made up of Chakib Alj and Mehdi Tazi, respectively President and Vice-President General of CGEM, are preparing the elections at the head of the confederation and are running for a second term. This round of discussions constitutes for them a new test on the ability of employers to win new measures, even promises from the Government, especially since some of the measures validated last year and included in the agreement signed with the unions and the government did not come into being. This is the case in particular of the law on strikes and the amendment of the Labor Code, two important pieces of legislation which should for the first one put order in strikes and for the second operate an upgrade of the legislation work.
This upgrading  of the law is necessary in order to take into account, among other things, the transformations that the world of labor is experiencing with the development of new forms of employment as well as the flexibility of employment, the latter being close to the heart of business leaders. In any case, the employers consider that this flexibility of employment could contribute to a decline in unemployment. This flexibility should provide companies with the tools for a better balance between supply and demand and would take into account the fluctuations of the market and the economic situation.
The employers’ confederation has always advocated responsible flexibility in the service of competitiveness and employment without managing to convince the workers unions who fear “dismissals and job insecurity”. 
The new round of social dialogue takes place in a complicated situation, namely high inflation resulting in a decline in purchasing power. Moreover,  most trade unions are asking again for a general increase in wages, or even pegging of wages to inflation. “On April 30, 2022, we signed an agreement with the Government. This document provides for measures, many of which have not been implemented. This is particularly the case with the general increase in wages and the overhaul of the income tax grid”, declared to L’Economiste Khalid Alami Houir, Secretary General of the CDT union, who proposes to the Government “to activate direct aid as was done during the Covid period, while waiting for the targeting system to be in place”. The trade union organization, which had called for a strike in the civil service to take place on Tuesday, April 18, criticizes the Government for the delay in activating the National Charter for Social Dialogue and wants more transparency concerning the issue of retirement. “It is unthinkable to align oneself with the proposal of a research firm”, added Alami Houir. Anyway,  negotiations promise to be quite intense. 
Khadija MASMOUDI