Social anger: the government is preparing a decree to push the branches to increase minimum wages

Communication stunt or real deterrent weapon? To respond to the unions' demands on the minimum wage, the government would be ready to issue a decree next week to force branches with a base salary below the minimum wage to negotiate with their employees.

The branch minimums are effectively set by agreements between unions and employers, who must renegotiate them to follow the minimum wage. However, this is automatically revalued every January 1 and as soon as inflation exceeds 2%. As a result, sector negotiations, which are often slower, struggle to keep up and salary scales therefore fall behind. Since the minimum wage applies to everyone, employees are paid the legal minimum, but the first conventional level remains lower, sometimes for months or even years. Which contributes to a decline in wages.

To speed things up and repair this anomaly, Emmanuel Macron last week urged professional sectors “which still have income below the minimum wage” to “relaunch” salary negotiations. To maintain pressure, the government could go further. In the latest social security financing law (LFSS) for 2026, an article conditions public aid paid to businesses. Applicable by decree, it provides for a reduction in subsidies to companies in sectors falling behind on the minimum wage and which have done nothing to compensate for it.

If Frédéric Souillot, general secretary of Force Ouvrière, sees it as “a weapon of nuclear deterrence”, the employers question “the solidity of the mechanism”, indicates a source in Le Figaro. According to Les Échos, the draft decree already signed by Jean-Pierre Farandou, the Minister of Labor, would significantly reduce the scope of the law. A branch would only be sanctioned after an entire year of non-compliance and the order which designates it could be revised until November 30 if it complies.

Employers who have individually increased their employees on their own, outside of a sector agreement, would also be spared. Ultimately, the mechanism would only be applicable to a few branches. Of the 179 listed, with more than 5,000 employees, only 16 had, as of September 30, a first level of remuneration below the minimum wage since January 1 or before, according to figures from the Ministry of Labor. The others caught up in time. According to a CGT census, technical design offices (the branch called Syntec), automobile services, services for disabled people, road transport and fast food had a conventional minimum below the gross monthly minimum wage, set at 1867.02 euros.