What if the system always encouraged more hiring rather than more taxing? (updated on 1 April 2013). It is the companies that hire (especially the smallest and youngest, cf OECD reportWhat a scoop! So, rather than desperately helping companies and sectors that are doing badly, let's help those ... that don't need any help! ... a funny idea? not so much.
Unemployment not only persists but is increasing, inexorably, dramatically. Faced with this scourge, the government, the governments, seem overwhelmed, even powerless, seeking to fill the gaps in the social plans or recreating public jobs, as if to compensate. Like the southerners in "Gone with the Wind", helplessly facing Atlanta devoured by flames, we sometimes have the feeling that unemployment is as much a part of the crisis as anything else...
For their part, companies, which everyone knows (or recognises, as an admission) that they are the solution to employment, are suffering from a lack of competitiveness, are reaching critical thresholds, and are calling on public opinion and the ruling class to become aware of this. It is now a hurricane warning that is being issued by small and large bosses.
To make matters worse, our political and social context, anchored in philosophical and dogmatic convictions, stirs up and regenerates class and party struggles, often making arguments inaudible and conversation impossible. For some, the "pigeons" become "vultures" or "whiners", especially when at the same time, in a joyful amalgam, others recall dividend distribution figures that may, admittedly, be at odds with the context.
In the end, we end up with the idea of taxing households and businesses again and again, as if the tax whip were going to make the horse that carries us go faster. Tax fatigue has now even turned into "tax fatigue". what is the point of taxation?"
So, as the time is ripe for open letters and giant brainstorming, here is a contribution to try to see things differently, by reversing the gaze to try to find a virtuous circle of job creation.
Rather than taxing and envying success, we should encourage and envy it.
Rather than trying to artificially support companies and sectors in difficulty, let's help those who have prospects to have greater ones, because there are companies that are hiring or need to hire! These companies have prospects and are proactive. They are developing companies, locomotives for the whole of society. The idea of the virtuous circle is toencouraging more growth rather than trying to curb the crisis The more I hire, the more I gain from hiring, with a marginal cost that decreases as the hiring process progresses. This is a way of revaluing companies as citizens, as partners in employment. We only talk about social plans, we never talk about hiring plans!
We don't need to reduce unemployment, we need to develop employment.
The "formula" may seem stupid and easy, because it basically says the same thing. In reality, it says it in a radically different way, in an extraordinarily stronger, more positive, less fatalistic way. It says to move forward rather than erect barricades. Reducing unemployment means trying to preserve jobs that are often lost and pointing the finger at employers who are the executioners. Developing employment means setting a positive objective, providing encouragement, showing that all is not doom and gloom, and accepting that bosses are also recruiters and partners when it is so easy to hand them over to the mob.
Every month in the United States, we wait for the "employment figures", in France for the "unemployment figures". We need to change our indicators.
The principle is to indicate and identify companies and sectors that are on a positive job creation trend. A display that would also be useful to guide students in their choice of courses and thus combat dead-end courses. We know every month how many new unemployed people there are, but no one knows or talks about how many new people are working! When 10,000 extra unemployed people are announced, no one knows whether this corresponds to 90,000 new jobs - 100,000 jobs lost, or 10,000 - 20,000! But also, let's be consistent: when we read the rankings or other announcements of companies that say they are recruiting, there again we don't know the balance. It's not the same thing to recruit 1,000 people because the company has a high turnover and is going to stay more or less at the same level, or to recruit 1,000 genuinely additional people because the company is growing. The point is not to judge the quality of recruitment, but the quality of information.
CREATION OF THE "SNCE":
Companies must be rewarded for their "loyalty" to employment. Today, there is no lack of accounting, tax and social data to determine whether a company or a sector has a positive or negative employment dynamic. Each company would then have its "SNCE", its Net Job Creation Balance: recruitments - departures. The more positive the NECS is (it can be measured in absolute terms or as an index), the more the company (or the sector) has facilities/assistance/incentives to go even further and faster. It is a kind of public subsidy for employment.
And the more positive this SNCE is, the more the company is a ... EPE, an Employment Partner CompanyThis can be a source of collective internal pride, and even of demand. (Who today can easily, and above all precisely, say or know where such and such a company, or even one's own, stands in terms of employment dynamics?)
Indicators and incentives that can be differentiated by type of contract (SNCE-CDI; SNCE-Apprenticeship; SNCE-Disability, Etc.) / also likely to be calculated by sector, by region, etc. ("The NECS of sector Y is 115...), in other words, a great deal of educational and incentive value in a form of positive emulation on employment and indicators of guidance towards the employment markets.
It is also a way of fighting against our logic of thresholds which are barriers to development. These dams must be knocked down, so that we have an interest in going beyond them rather than an interest in stopping there, as is the case today, in the face of this ubiquitous situation: the more I develop, the less I gain from developing... and everyone loses.
So, how about it? Let's give companies the means to show their commitment to employment and, where appropriate, to encourage and congratulate them for this: we must not make name and shame, but name and pride!
-> The responsibility pact already exists through the role of companies as political players, and above all, the responsibility pact already exists. You just have to look at the figures, not just count recruitment, but the net balance, the SNCE, the Net Job Creation Balance, to find out whether companies are EPEs, Entreprises Partenaires de l'Emploi. In absolute terms or as an index relative to the number of employees (+1 employee at 10 or at 1000 does not have the same value), the SNCE will enable us to identify EPEs at level E, double E... or triple E... to finally reward companies that experience double-digit growth every year... in their workforce, and not just in their profits.
Encourage rather than punish.