Supplementary pensions from the private sector: Ursaf’s counterattack

The hour of response has arrived “Ursaf National Fund”. On Thursday, November 17, its leaders held a press conference to respond point by point “disinformation” and that “fantasies”. For more than a year and a half, the organization responsible for the collection of social insurance contributions has been the subject of a controversy linked to the fact that the state entrusted it with the collection of resources intended for the Agirc-Arrco private supplementary pension scheme. The expansion of its role, carried out by trade unions, employers and the opposition in critical conditions, both on the right and on the left.

Over the past ten years, the Urssaf network has been tasked with collecting contributions that enter the wallets of many institutions: unemployment insurance, vocational training and apprenticeship operators, etc. We are talking in technocratic language“Union of Social Restoration”. The goal is “Simplify business life”from “Reduce management costs” but also to increase the puncture yield. Thanks to battalions of controllers and decades of sophisticated collection procedures, Urssaf prides itself on being an efficient collector that improves cash flow: profits will be, for example, “150 million euros” per year for the jobseeker’s compensation system piloted by Unédic.

During Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term, this movement towards centralization continued. Thus, it was decided to transfer to Urssaf the collection of Agirc-Arrco contributions, which until now had been provided by private social welfare groups. That’s about €87 billion for the pensions of more than 13 million people.

“Resistance to serious difficulties”

The transfer was supposed to happen in early 2022, after the Social Security Funding for 2020 was enacted. The text was adopted at a time when the government wanted to build a universal pension system in which all existing funds would be combined. A prospect that is a source of concern among the social partners: as managers of Agirc-Arrco, they feared that the state would remove them from their positions and, over time, take control of the regime’s abundant financial reserves. about 60 billion euros).

The universal system project was eventually abandoned, but the fears did not disappear. In early 2021, trade unions and employers asked the executive to postpone the transfer. In support of their claim, they argued, in essence, that Ursaf’s intervention would jeopardize the calculation of the insured’s rights — a complex operation previously entirely in the hands of defense groups. Banner of Agirc-Arrco. The government finally agreed to a postponement of one year, i.e. 1^Eh January 2023, relay transmission.