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ORIGINAL FRENCH ARTICLE: Pouvoir d’achat: François Hollande ne promet rien pour le Smic
Puchasing power : François Hollande makes no promises for the minimum wage
Translated Friday 20 April 2012, by and reviewed by Derek Hanson
François Hollande indicated on Tuesday morning that if elected on the 6th of May, he will evoke the question of raising the minimum wage, beginning in June, with management and labour organisations.
The socialist candidate remains very timorous on this subject, quite unlike the Left Front, who propose to raise the minimum wage immediately to 1,700 euros gross per month.
When questioned about Left-Front candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s assurance that an increase in the minimum wage would be one of the “compulsory moves” when the Left comes to power, Mr Hollande confirmed: “I am not interested in compulsory moves, I am making moves to succeed; we must not make promises that cannot be kept.”
François Hollande is not promising anything. “We will have to look at what is achievable”, he explains, “as the minimum wage has not had a boost in at least three years." There will be two things:
1. “Consultation with management and labour organisations (…) at the beginning of the new parliamentary session regarding all social issues and in particular, boosting the minimum wage, as the session will begin in June. The date has changed but up to now it was June”
2. “secondly, for the future, not only for 2012 but for the five-year term, the minimum wage will not only be indexed, according to prices, and at the same time linked to economic growth (…) Whenever there is growth, the minimum wage will be increased”.
On the 14th of February, Hollande, MP for the Corrèze department, explained that if elected, he would apply this “simple rule” of linking economic growth and the minimum wage. He also indicated that he would call a meeting “as soon as the day after the election” with the management and labour organisations to organise the social side of his term”. “The minimum wage question will follow from these discussions”, he added.
