Category: Technology

Introduced in theory in 2012 by the so-called Sauvadet law but which actually came into force in 2015, teleworking has long remained marginal in the public service. The Covid epidemic changed the situation and on July 13, 2021, at the end of the crisis, an agreement was signed with the unions of civil servants requiring employers to negotiate or renegotiate their remote working arrangements, which can go up to three days.

The change in scale is obvious, confirms a statistical study on 2021 just published by the Ministry of the Public Service. It figures at 19% the share of civil servants who telework, excluding teachers. Or 3 points less than in the private sector. However, this proportion covers very different situations depending on the public functions, linked to the specificities of the professions exercised with a rate of only 4% in hospitals, 16% in local authorities and 37% within the State.

Reduce office surfaces

The result of a “very proactive acceleration”, this boom “constitutes a strategic and operational challenge for public employers both in material terms and from a managerial point of view”, notes the Court of Auditors in the report that it has just to publish on telework in the public service. It asks public employers to take a “systemic approach” to draw all the consequences in terms of operation where telework has been massified.

She emphasizes “the significant budgetary effort [fourni] to provide their agents with mobile equipment and departments with audio and video conferencing solutions” in particular. Equipment that was sorely lacking at the start of the Covid epidemic, knowing that it still remains to “complete the IT infrastructure.

But she insists on the need to draw the consequences on property charges with a reduction in office space as the private sector has done. The Court of Auditors also warns of the need to “ensure the productivity of telework and the effectiveness of the methods of controlling agents” remotely.

“Expand the range of contact with users”

But she also sees in telework “an opportunity to be seized to improve and renovate the public supply of services to users” and identifies two ways to do so. The first is to use it to “broaden the contact ranges of users with the administration, which responds to a strong demand from the latter”. The second is to “develop a contact offer by videoconference, which would then become a fourth channel of contact with the user”. This would, the Court believes, limit the “effects sometimes denounced of the dematerialization of procedures”.

This would mean a development of teleworking among agents in contact with the public. For the time being, as in the private sector, executives and higher intellectual professions constitute the majority of teleworkers: 44% of them telework throughout the public service (and even 58% in that of the State). not including teachers).

Intermediate professions are half as numerous (22% on average) and workers and employees even further behind since only 7% of them telecommute. And the proportion of teleworking agents is twice as low in sparsely populated municipalities as in the Paris conurbation.

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Although accustomed to crises, food aid associations are worried about an increase in needs against a background of inflation. “Food banks have seen an increase in the number of people using food aid since the beginning of the year,” warns Laurence Champier, the federal director of the French Federation of Food Banks.

The organization, which at the end of this week is carrying out a national collection of donations, saw the number of its beneficiaries increase by 9% in the first half compared to the end of last year. At the end of this year, it estimates that it will have supported “between 10 and 12%” more people than in 2021, the year when it had already supported 2.2 million people.

10 million euros for students

“There is an increase in food prices and energy costs. This puts people in a precarious situation who were perhaps at the limit [NDLR : en termes de budget] “, continues Laurence Champier. “There are more people and people are also coming more. »

His alert echoes that launched in recent days by the association “Les Restos du Coeur”. “We have seen a 12% increase in people registered and welcomed since last April,” said his boss, Patrice Douret in “Le Parisien”. And this one to evoke “a situation that we have never known”.

The associations themselves have to deal with an increase in the cost of their purchases. Faced with this worrying situation, the government announced in early November the creation of a “sustainable food aid fund” of 60 million euros in 2023. On Tuesday, it said it would release an envelope of 10 million euros for student food aid. Aid representing “the equivalent of at least 300,000 food parcels allowing a student to eat for a week”, assures the executive.

“The poorest of the poor”

According to INSEE, between 2 and 4 million people used food aid in 2021. The profiles of the beneficiaries vary according to the type of aid provided. Slightly more than 70% of the people helped turned to the distribution of parcels and 30% to social groceries providing very low prices. Still according to INSEE, 70% of the beneficiaries of social parcels and groceries are women, nearly 40% of whom raise one or more children alone.

Most food aid recipients live in ordinary accommodation (86%) and receive other forms of assistance, including social benefits. The beneficiaries are often “the poorest of the poor”, summarizes INSEE, with a standard of living of 637 euros per month on average, for those living in their homes or with relatives.

The institute also points out that almost half of the people who have recourse to food aid are immigrants.

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And six. After the rejection of a motion of censure LFI on Friday, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne drew the constitutional weapon of 49-3 for the sixth time.

“We cannot start the same discussions forever,” argued Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, engaging the government’s responsibility for the expenditure side of the Social Security budget, in a new reading.

Rejection of the motion of censure LFI

Just before, the Assembly had largely rejected a motion of censure LFI on the revenue part. It collected only 85 supporters – rebellious, communists and ecologists – very far from the 289 votes necessary to bring down the government.

But ultimately, the discussions focused less on Social Security and its budget than on the atmosphere of tension that has reigned in the National Assembly for 24 hours. Thursday evening, during the examination of an LFI bill, the names of birds rocketed in the hemicycle, until a “You’re going to close it” launched by the elected Guadeloupean Olivier Serva (Liot) at the Renaissance group.

The oppositions denounce the attitude of the macronists

By suspending sessions and amendments, the presidential camp exasperated the opposition by preventing the vote on an unsubdued text in favor of the reintegration of caregivers not vaccinated against Covid-19. Friday evening, the LFI Caroline Fiat pounded “the inadmissible image of the government yesterday” and Minister Olivier Véran “bragging as usual”. She blamed the Macronists for their “hundreds of ridiculous sub-amendments” to slow down the debates.

LR Yannick Neuder in turn denounced the “chaotic situation last night”, saying he was “dismayed by the behavior of the majority and the government” and his “little game of obstruction”, a “denial of democracy” . And the ecologist Sophie Taillé-Polian castigated the “liquidation of Parliament before closing”.

Elisabeth Borne first played the appeasement by calling not to “switch into role-playing games, even fights”. Then she went to the front against the “delaying maneuvers” of LFI which withdrew several texts to discuss its proposal on caregivers. “You do not appreciate that the majority masters the rules of procedure of your Assembly as well as you do,” she told the opposition.

In the end, throughout the day, the presidential camp and the opposition passed responsibility for the invectives exchanged the day before, and the debate on the Social Security budget was therefore relegated to the background.

The National Assembly had only debated its revenue section for three hours. She had voted on the government’s proposal for an additional envelope of 543 million euros for the hospital in 2022, due to “additional costs linked to Covid”. They are in addition to some 570 million euros for the hospital presented to the Senate at first reading, in particular to “deal with the early epidemic of bronchiolitis”, had specified the Minister of Health François Braun.

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The myth of the ecological transition that will knock down industrial jobs and impose a painful change in skills may have died. The majority of forecasters anticipate the need for a massive effort of professional retraining to adapt the made in France to the green industry. The best example? Workers specializing in thermal car engines: overtaken by the electric wave, they will have to relearn everything, or almost.

A very comprehensive study on the subject sheds much more nuanced light. Produced by the observatory of Opco 2i, the joint body responsible for training and work-study programs for 32 professional branches of industry, it certainly does not call into question the consequences of the transition on the activity of companies, forced to reduce their carbon footprint in all directions. “They did not wait,” recalls the head of the observatory, Fabien Boisbras.

Very few obsolete professions

As for those who work in factories, on the other hand, we are far from the big night, at least on the horizon of the study which is 2025. Unlike another transition, digital this one there, very few new professions are to be expected on an inter-industrial scale. Rather an evolution of the skills attached to current professions, and still not all. What’s more, a very limited number of professions will become obsolete.

“The ecological transition will have no impact on the business gesture of production. However, operators must be made aware of the issue, as we have done with safety,” reads one of the many testimonials from employers, which sums up the general feeling well.

For Fabien Boisbras, two reasons explain the disconnection between what is announced by forecasters or politicians and what is anticipated by manufacturers. First, a job can be new to a company when it exists elsewhere. Secondly, the amalgam that is made between profession and associated skills. “The skills mobilized can evolve without the job changing at all,” he says.

Green energy buyer

Among the eight major job families identified by the observatory, two are the most affected: purchasing and engineering/R&D. Between 50% and 70% of the associated macro-skills (scientific knowledge, for example) must be reinforced, or even lead to specializations, in the purchase of green energy for example.

Three other families will be affected to a lesser extent, up to 40% of their macro-skills: logistics/waste/safety/quality, business and technical-commercial engineering, method and industrialization. Two, finally, will be relatively less (10% to 30%), installation-maintenance and manufacturing.

All professions concerned, five macro-skills to be strengthened stand out because they concern a very high number of employees in industry. It includes, for example, knowledge in terms of quality, health, safety and the environment to control hydrogen. This will also be the case for six other macro-skills but which concern fewer people (mastery of environmental standards, etc.) and ten even less widespread (optimization of consumption, etc.).

Formation: the fog

To take the example of heat engines, if foundries are suffering, continues Fabien Boisbras, it is because orders for mechanical parts in the automobile industry have decreased. “Their market is changing. However, there will always be a need for moulders-corers to manufacture mechanical parts for other markets, with higher added value, in offshore wind power for example”, he assures us.

In this context, companies know that they will have to activate the lever of continuing education (which itself must green its content at a forced march), but are moving forward a little in the fog. “Rapid technological and regulatory developments, the systemic nature of the transition complicates the identification of training needs”, observes the Opco 2i Observatory.

Last conclusion which also calls into question a certain form of pessimism: the ecological transition will go hand in hand with an increase in the workforce in industry. This will especially be the case for engineers, researchers, supervisors or senior technicians. The attractiveness of these qualified profiles will benefit from this, provided that the branches make this known to young people. The situation looks less favorable for employees or operators.

France has never devoted so much money to the training of the unemployed: more than twice as much as the average of the countries of the European Union. This is one of the highlights of the third evaluation report, published Thursday, of the skills investment plan (PIC), the 15 billion euro scheme launched at the start of Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term to five years.

Specifically, more than 1 million training courses were initiated in 2021, all public funders combined, i.e. 231,000 more than in 2018, the first year of application of the plan. This is without counting the 610,000 training courses financed via the personal training account (CPF) of job seekers independently, that is to say without the participation of Pôle emploi. To the point of “creating a blur” with the PIC, pointed out, as already last year, the chairman of the committee, Marc Gurgand, also a professor at the Paris School of Economics.

Who is the most serious in terms of public deficit? The Senate adopted Thursday evening the first part devoted to the receipts of the finance bill for 2023, offering the opportunity for a new pass of arms between the government and the senatorial majority on the right around their credibility in terms of control. public accounts.

The section adopted by the senators results in a text that has been largely reworked compared to the initial copy of the government. First victim, the reduction in production taxes (CVAE) wanted by the executive, which was finally removed after a miss from the senatorial right which only wanted to amend this government reform. Above all, parliamentarians have expanded the measures devoted to communities, in particular by strengthening the “safety net” put on the table by Bercy to compensate for the increase in energy expenditure.

Credibility issue

All this resulted in a rather heavy bill for public finances. Bercy had thus calculated that the deficit should be raised to 5.2% of GDP next year (against a forecast of 5% in the government project) in view of all the amendments voted. Senators have lowered inheritance tax for 2 billion euros, reduced several VAT rates (on public transport in particular, but also margarine or the equine sector) for 700 million or raised the tax credit for childcare. 250 million children.

What pose a problem of credibility for the senatorial right, which continues to criticize the government for its lack of ambitions in terms of deficit reduction. Just before the final vote, the senators therefore removed by a second deliberation several costly amendments (in particular that on inheritance rights) or badly targeted.

In the end, the deficit therefore stands at 4.9% of this first examination of the Senate. “This is done only on the backs of companies, since this reduction in the deficit is based on the abolition of the reduction in the CVAE, otherwise the deficit would be at 5.1%”, lashed Gabriel Attal, the Minister Delegate for Public Accounts . A way to put LR at odds, which has allowed itself to be overwhelmed by the left when it is in favor of lowering production taxes.

New 49.3 coming soon

The Bercy tenant also joked about the fact that the Senate voted for a budget trajectory for 2027 which provides for a 4.6% deficit from 2023. euros in savings on credits, we are waiting for you to tell us where”, he attacked. The general rapporteur for the Budget (LR) in the Senate, Jean-François Husson, repelled these attacks. “I’m not sure that one or the other has lessons to give in this area,” he said.

The Senate began on Thursday evening to examine the second part of the finance bill devoted to expenditure, while the final vote for the entire text is scheduled for December 6. The budget will then go back to the Assembly, where the government should again resort to 49.3 to adopt it. Gabriel Attal has already warned that he will restore the reduction in production taxes on this occasion.

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Economic uncertainties, political tensions, global warming, changing businesses and industries… The world is changing. How to decipher weak signals, anticipate and best adapt? The “Echos” editorial staff, with its 200 specialized journalists, provides you with strategic thinking tools every day to understand our environment and deal with changes. Through our analyses, surveys, chronicles and editorials, we support our subscribers to help them make the best decisions.

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The showdown continues between liberal biologists and the government. After two months of opposition to the Social Security budget, the biologists’ unions have called for a new “renewable strike” from December 1, believing that they have received “no concrete response” from Medicare. to their latest proposal.

Received at Medicare on Monday after their three-day strike last week, the four liberal biologist unions had submitted a “compromise” to their interlocutor, requiring a response by Wednesday evening at the latest. Opposed to the “sustainable planing blow” of 250 million euros per year – included in the Social Security budget (PLFSS) for 2023 -, they consented to a drain of the same amount next year, reduced to 145 million 2024 to 2026. But at the end of their ultimatum, they regret having received “no concrete answer”.

The director of Medicare, Thomas Fatôme, however welcomed their “strong commitments”. While hoping that the exchanges can “continue to allow the achievement of the objective set” in the PLFSS.

Join the movement of liberal doctors

But this is too little, say the biologists, who are calling for “a written and quantified return to (their) proposal” before resuming discussions. They consider having “no other choice” than to “go on strike renewable from December 1”.

A date chosen in order to “join the movement initiated by other health professions”, in particular liberal doctors, most of whose unions are calling for the closing of practices on December 1 and 2.

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Economic uncertainties, political tensions, global warming, changing businesses and industries… The world is changing. How to decipher weak signals, anticipate and best adapt? The “Echos” editorial staff, with its 200 specialized journalists, provides you with strategic thinking tools every day to understand our environment and deal with changes. Through our analyses, surveys, chronicles and editorials, we support our subscribers to help them make the best decisions.

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Emmanuel Macron, with his speech in Belfort last February and then between the two rounds of the presidential election, made it one of the major themes of his campaign. The government debated its energy policy last week in the National Assembly. The ace. According to the OpinionWay-Square barometer for “Les Echos” and Radio Classique, 70% of French people have a negative view of the government’s energy strategy, believing that it is not clear. Even among voters who voted for Emmanuel Macron in the first round of the presidential election last April, only a narrow majority (55%) finds this strategy clear.

“The government’s policy is not legible in terms of energy, it seems opaque, confused to a large majority of French people. All the variations that have taken place in recent years, the oscillations during the campaign, the changes in policies have created illegibility, confusion, ”explains Frédéric Micheau, deputy general manager of OpinionWay.

Doubts

As for the objectives displayed by the executive, the least that can be said is that they raise doubts among the French since only a minority (42%) think that the government is doing everything possible to ensure that France produces electricity low-carbon, to ensure its energy independence and to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels…

These doubts are accompanied “also by the idea that you have to rely on your own strength, in particular in this period of fears of tension on the electricity network”, continues Frédéric Micheau when 69% of French people think that citizens should do more be encouraged to produce their own energy.

Prioritize renewable energies

The French are, on the other hand, very divided on the budgetary policy to be implemented for the energy transition since a very small majority (51%) considers that this transition justifies significant public expenditure, even if it means increasing the deficits while 48% oppose it.

If opinion has varied a lot in recent years vis-à-vis nuclear power, it is more favorable to renewable energies (ENR), which are better accepted. A majority of French people thus think that the government should first favor the development of renewable energies (59% against 39% for nuclear power) and unsurprisingly, 63% prefer to see a wind farm set up nearby rather than a power station.

But in the projects which must be a priority according to the French, solar is acclaimed (81%). It is followed by the construction of new nuclear power plants (66%) then, by offshore wind power (64%) and finally, onshore wind power (58%).

Wind turbines… but far from home

While the bill to accelerate the production of renewable energies, widely voted in the Senate, began its journey in the Assembly on Monday in committee, the main measures of the text are widely supported by the French and in the lead, the obligation to install photovoltaic panels in car parks with more than 80 spaces within three to five years (87%) or the simplification of procedures for the installation of wind turbines at sea (68%).

Not to a contradiction, they also support, at 63%, the right of veto of mayors on the establishment of ENR projects in their municipality or the surrounding municipalities that the LR senators had introduced before removing it. This suggests that they are in favor of renewable energies, especially when they are located far from home.

But they are also much more likely to support the provision which has replaced the right of veto and which requires mayors to designate areas in their town planning documents to accommodate renewable energy projects (81%). “Through their elected officials, citizens want to be able to influence decisions and be more involved,” says Frédéric Micheau. The condition, no doubt, of greater acceptability.

A peak at 69.3 million inhabitants in 2044 then a drop to 68.1 million in 2070. A year ago, INSEE delivered its 50-year evolution forecasts for the French population. But behind these figures hide contrasting situations according to the territories, shows a new study that the Institute publishes this Thursday.

The contrast is striking with the period 1995-2018 when the number of inhabitants increased, with annual growth varying between +0.13% and +1.18%. The most radical break in pace concerns five regions which saw this trend turn around in 2015 when they reached their demographic peak: Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Centre-Val de Loire, Grand Est, Normandy and Hauts -of France.

The south and the west more spared

But all the others will also be impacted, at the very least by a serious brake on the progression of their population or by a drop according to the central scenario adopted by INSEE; a scenario based on the assumption of stable fertility at 1.8 children per woman, regular gains in life expectancy to reach 90 years for women and 87.5 years for men, and net migration positive of 70,000 people per year.

On the basis of these assumptions, “between 2018 and 2050, the population would increase less quickly in two thirds of metropolitan regions and would continue to decrease in the remaining third”, estimates INSEE. And “between 2050 and 2070, population growth would not exceed 0.1% in any region,” adds the institute.

The most spared would be the southern and western regions, with a significant increase in their overall population over the period 2018-2070. Occitania would be the most dynamic, with an annual increase of 0.25% by 2070, ahead of Pays de la Loire at +0.21%. These two regions would also be the only ones not to lose inhabitants between 2050 and 2070. But their progression would be very weak over these twenty years (+0.06% and +0.01%).

Closer examination reveals an overall decrease in population by 2070 along the diagonal of low population densities, from the Moselle to the Lot. Conversely, only 10 departments would see the increase in their population continue until 2070: Ariège, Haute-Garonne, Gironde, Hérault, Ille-et-Vilaine, Loire-Atlantique, Tarn , Tarn-et-Garonne, Guyana and Mayotte.

The impact of fertility

These prospects are strongly linked to the state of fertility, underlines INSEE. If it fell to 1.6 children per woman in 2030, all the departments would see their population drop. Conversely, the increase to 2 children per woman would delay or even completely cancel the existence of a tipping point by 2070 everywhere except in the diagonal of low densities.

Unsurprisingly, INSEE also stresses that regional disparities are strongly linked to intraregional and international migratory phenomena, with the attractiveness of the southern and western regions helping to maintain their population growth. What more than compensate for the natural deficit for Corsica, New Aquitaine, Occitanie, Brittany, Pays de la Loire and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.

The aging of the population which is announced will strongly affect all the departments of mainland France with, by 2070, more than 30% of people over 65 in 62 departments and even 40% in 5 departments (Charente-Maritime, Gers, Lot, Dordogne and Creuse).

For the moment it holds. Despite a difficult economic context, still marked by the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis and the threat of economic recession, the business climate remains stable in France. The indicator that summarizes it, calculated by INSEE from the responses of business leaders in the main market sectors, remained at 102 in November, for the third consecutive month. It is therefore still “slightly above its long-term average (100)”, notes INSEE.

But this stability hides disparities. Thus, the institute notes a growing concern among business leaders in the industry sector, reflected by a drop in the business climate indicator in this sector compared to October (101 against 103 last month). The economic situation is deteriorating, “business leaders being less positive about their recent activity and their order books,” notes INSEE.

Same state of mind among leaders in the building sector where the business climate is deteriorating (113 against 115 in October), “mainly due to the decline in the balances of opinion relating to activity, both past and expected”, explains the institute. Business leaders are still just as numerous (69%) to declare “obstacles limiting their production”, in particular recruitment and supply difficulties.

In services, the business climate indicator is also deteriorating (104 against 106 a month earlier), “under the effect of a slight deterioration in the business expectations of the business leaders surveyed”.

Conversely, the business climate in wholesale trade, measured bi-monthly, has improved markedly (to 102 against 97 in September). “This improvement is mainly due to the marked increase in the balance of opinion concerning deliveries received from abroad and, to a lesser extent, by the increase in that relating to past sales”, indicates INSEE.

In retail trade, the indicator remains below its long-term average, at 97, but it is stabilizing compared to the previous month. “This stability masks contrasting variations in the balances of opinion, down in particular for ordering intentions and up in particular for the general outlook for activity”, concludes the institute.

How to react effectively to changes?

Economic uncertainties, political tensions, global warming, changing businesses and industries… The world is changing. How to decipher weak signals, anticipate and best adapt? The “Echos” editorial staff, with its 200 specialized journalists, provides you with strategic thinking tools every day to understand our environment and deal with changes. Through our analyses, surveys, chronicles and editorials, we support our subscribers to help them make the best decisions.

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