While this Thursday 8, the Assembly must vote the extension of paternity leave to 28 days including seven mandatory, the debates on this a priori consensual reform could be more heated than it seems. At least that is what the discussions showed when the text was passed before the Assembly’s social affairs committee on September 30.
→ ANALYSIS. Extended paternity leave, short and long term benefits
If they gave the green light to the reform, the deputies did not completely decide the question of what the new device should be called.
The initial bill had chosen to no longer designate fathers, in the name of the diversity of family forms. The idea is in particular that the second parent of homosexual couples can recognize themselves.
“The notion of ‘family’ is evolving and the law needs to take these evolutions into account and be more inclusive. Therefore, it is essential that the term paternity leave be changed in favor of a more neutral name, namely parental leave “, argued the explanatory memorandum of the text, carried in particular by Guillaume Chiche, a former walker passed to the group Solidarity, democracy, ecology.
“When you change the words, it’s never neutral”
This desire for change was variously welcomed in committee. The rebellious elected officials supported it, while preferring the term “parenthood” to that of “kinship”, too “vague”. On the right and on the Modem on the contrary, everyone recalled their attachment to the term paternity. LR deputy Stéphane Viry deplored the lack of “Readability” alternative names.
An argument taken up by his colleague Bernard Perrut, as well as by the Modem Michèle de Vaucouleurs and the LR Thibault Bazin. He had also tabled an amendment to restore the term paternity, which was ultimately not studied. “When we change the words, it’s never neutral, he argues. We open the door to other situations. “
In fact, an amendment tabled by the LREM deputy Alain Touraine caused trouble. He asked the government to report “On the advisability of extending the benefit of parental leave to the employed spouse of the father or to the employee linked to him by a civil solidarity pact or living in a conjugal relationship with him, in order to take into account in particular co-parenting situations and of seperation “. Something to make Thibault Bazin jump: “Who are we talking about exactly? Parents who use surrogacy, which is illegal? “ The amendment was ultimately rejected.
At the end of the discussions, the text to be studied in the hemicycle does retain the term “authorship”. But the question of whether or not to maintain this term should arise, promises Guillaume Chiche.
From 11 to 28 days, of which seven are compulsory
Basically, the initial text proposed to increase paternity leave from 11 days currently to 12 weeks, 8 of which are compulsory. Ambition revised downwards in committee to join Emmanuel Macron’s proposal, at the end of September, for a leave from 14 to 28 days, including 7 mandatory.
→ MAINTENANCE. Paternity leave: “This is not a measure that will reassure small and medium-sized enterprises”
Here again, the modalities should be debated. As in committee, the left should denounce an unequal project, likely to create strong disparities between employees, depending on whether they will have to be satisfied with the mandatory seven days or not. Conversely, the LR group should defend split leave, more compatible with the freedom of parents to organize their lives as they wish, but also with the constraints of companies.
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