Contenu du sommaire : Dossier : L'influence de la loi du 20 août 2008 sur les relations sociales dans les entreprises

Exonerations, Exemptions and Tax Expenditure: The True Cost of Social Protection?
The article aims to shed light on the cost to social protection of social and tax expenditure in the form of changes to and exemptions from mandatory contributions. The article begins with a cost-based typology of social and tax expenditures on social protection in 2011, before turning to the forms of protection that represent a significant cost to social insurance, such as social security, unemployment, and supplementary pensions. Above and beyond the clearly identified exonerations from social contributions, losses arising from which are broadly compensated for, a series of exemptions also significantly lower social revenues due to the broad nature of the tax base in question: around 9% of the total private sector payroll is not subjected to the customary social contributions. The loss of income due to exemptions which social contributions fail to make up amounted to some 24 billion euros in 2015, contributing not only to the country's social security deficit but even more markedly to the deficits in unemployment insurance and supplementary pensions. At the same time, employees saw their contributory rights to a pension and unemployment benefits partially reduced by the same systems. The article demonstrates that a proportion of the exemptions can be interpreted as a partial renunciation of social insurance in favour of private collective contracts.

Gender-based Pension Inequality in the Public and Private Sectors: A Distribution Analysis
Women's pensions by direct entitlement represent on average a little over half of those of men in the private sector and four-fifths in the public sector. The article draws on the all-regime pensioner sample for 2008 to demonstrate that the gap can be explained in terms of differences in reference wages and length of contribution, with variable weighting along the distribution. The shorter career spans of women have the most significant impact on the lowest incomes, while their lower wages account for the differential among the upper two-thirds of the wage scale. Minimum pensions reduce the pension gap for the lowest fifth of female earners. The article then turns to gender-based pension inequalities. The dispersion in pensions is greater in the private sector than in the public sector and is comparable in scale for both men and women. The dispersion of pensions for women can be explained both by the wide range of reference wages and lengths of career counting towards a pension, while wages are the main factor for men.

The Origins of the ILO (1890-1950): Early Experiments in Modelling a “Social Europe”From the late XIXth century on, the major European powers made attempts to promote fair competition and combat social dumping at an international level. Governments soon agreed on the need for a social framework to achieve their objective. It was to consist of social conventions experimented in Western Europe, then at the cutting edge of labour issues, then exported to the rest of the world. The ILO, which can be seen as the culmination of these efforts, further developed thinking on such issues, particularly those related to Europe as a social entity. In fact the body recommended by members of the institution and marked by social legislation common to the European powers masked a democratic, productivist model keen to protect the interests not only of workers but also of employers. The article sets out to explore this model and its various stages of development, particularly as driven by the ILO, thereby seeking to shed light on the nature of « social Europe ».

The Law of 20 August 2008 and the Bases of Trade Union Representation
What effect has the 2008 law on trade union representativeness had on the role of employee representatives within companies? A sociological study conducted five years after the law came into effect demonstrated that it hastened the loss of those union delegates who had little support, while failing to consolidate the position of delegates who remained in place. Rather, the latter attributed the loss of their colleagues with weaker support to a longstanding process of weakening union influence. Bargaining sites have become centralised at some remove from the zones of influence of elected delegates. The bargaining performance of union delegates is hard to decipher at the local level. Local delegates and HR staff take a sceptical view of the sustainability of teams of representatives. Legal institutionalisation is no substitute for trade union dynamics in cultivating vocations for union activity or in forging a new basis for union representativeness.

The Spirit of Social Dialogue: From the Law of 20 August 2008 to Collective Agreements on Trade Union Rights and Workforce Representation
The law of 20 August 2008 was intended to strengthen the legitimacy of employee unions, notably by basing their representativeness on the profile of voters across the company. While it is difficult to tell at this point whether this aim has been achieved, it remains the case that the law has had a significant impact in reshaping collective relations in the workplace at both company and group level. The study of collective group and company agreements on collective employee representation clearly demonstrates that partners in social dialogue have taken the measure of these changes. It also shows how in many cases the law amplified an effect that many collective agreements had already brought in on a smaller scale. The research presented in this paper probably invites to a broader reflection. Has the legislative stamp of approval for social dialogue been of benefit for union organisations or does it rather represent a further step along the path to self-regulation in the workplace?