In presenting the pension reform project, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne insisted on the government’s desire to “take into account professional wear and tear linked to the conditions of exercise of certain professions”. And since then, the word “usury” has come up in all the remarks of the ministers concerned. Gone is the notion of “difficulty”, which we used until then to talk about the same problem: that of people who are made to work to the limit of what is bearable, to the point of “killing them on the job”. When Borne speaks of “prevention of wear”, it does mean the prevention of arduous work…
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The first reason for this change in vocabulary is the easiest to understand. During Macron’s first five-year term, the government, under pressure from the Medef, amputated the list of ten hardship factors (extreme temperatures, noise, night work, etc.) which had been drawn up in 2012 under François Hollande. Four criteria have been removed, only six remain. A social regression in the eyes of the unions. It is therefore more difficult for the government to promise today to ” take into account the hardship linked to the conditions of exercise of certain trades”. But the semantic shift in power reflects a deeper break in approach.
“Penibilists” and “usurists”
Wear, hardship, the two words are not quite synonymous. The first describes the result of a past situation, the bitter fruit of a “health-impairing process”. The second describes a present evil, whether physical or psychosocial.
This slight difference in meaning sheds light on the debate that has pitted “penibilists” and “usurists” since the early 2000s. For the former, you have to work on the work situation. It is certainly not easy to measure (a series of hardship factors must be defined), but it is the only way to get to the root of the problem. For the latter, wear and tear is a better instrument, because it has the virtue of being easier to measure, through medical examinations. It is the simple medical report of bodily or psychological degradation. Quite logically, the unions have pushed the first approach and the Medef prefers the second, which it considers simpler and less intrusive. In an employer’s logic, if an employee is exhausted, it is a question of health: the company is therefore not obliged to modify the working conditions. This worker is declared “worn out” and retired early.
The implicit message of the word “usury” is that “arduousness” is inevitable. Conversely, the implicit message of the word “difficulty” is that “wear and tear” can be avoided. The word “usury” thus preserves the dogma of holy work. Almost three years ago, on “RTL”, the boss of Medef, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, indicated as well as he “didn’t like the word hardship” because he gives according to him at work “a connotation that is not the right one” : “Work is a form of fulfillment, I prefer the word wear and tear”.
Politically and symbolically, the word “usury” is not necessarily the happiest choice. Even if the word “difficulty” can awaken the idea of punishment (poena in Latin, poinế in Greek), it refers at least to a very human affect: pain. Conversely, wear puts the worker on the same level as a simple machine. Like her, we wear her out; like her, he comes “at the end of his rope”.
