Lecornu opens wage talks at Matignon as cost-of-living protests test his government

Matignon opens its doors to the unions

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu received trade union leaders and employer organisations at Matignon on Monday morning, opening a week of talks on wages and purchasing power after weeks of strikes and marches across France. The meeting, billed as a "social conference", began at 9.30am and brought together the private-sector unions and the main employer federations, with Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Farandou, Finance Minister Roland Lescure and the minister for small business and purchasing power, Serge Papin, at the table.

Lecornu called the talks after the largest strike of the autumn on Thursday, when hundreds of thousands of people marched nationwide. He is expected to present the government's measures at a press conference later on Monday. The centrepiece is a rise in the statutory minimum wage, the SMIC, to just above €1,500 net a month; an increase of about €22 on the current €1,477.93, achieved by bringing forward the automatic inflation adjustment due in January and adding a small discretionary top-up.

The unions arrived unconvinced. The CFDT, France's largest union confederation, is seeking €100 a month more; the hard-left CGT wants a 10% rise, worth about €150, and the indexation of wages to prices. For them, the government's offer is a fraction of what the streets have been demanding since September.

The numbers both sides are arguing over

The SMIC, the salaire minimum interprofessionnel de croissance, stands at €1,477.93 net a month. It was raised by €35 in June to reflect higher inflation, and by law it rises again on 1 January. The government now proposes to move that automatic adjustment to December and add a discretionary "coup de pouce" of roughly €22, taking the minimum just past the €1,500 threshold that Farandou has described as important, provided the increase does not harm employment. No final decision had been made before Monday's meeting, Farandou said.

The demands on the other side of the table are far larger. The CFDT wants €100 net a month added to the minimum wage; the CGT wants 10%, about €150, and for wages to be indexed to prices; the CFTC is seeking about 2%. The gap between the government's €22 and the unions' €100 to €150 is the distance Monday's talks must somehow close.

The pressure behind the talks is measured in turnout. The nationwide strike on Thursday 5 November drew nearly 600,000 people according to the Interior Ministry, the largest of the current wave, and almost 1.6 million by the CGT's count. On Saturday 7 November, a fourth consecutive weekend of demonstrations brought 146,000 people onto the streets by the ministry's count, 46,000 of them in Paris, with clashes in the capital and in Marseille; the unions put the national figure at 250,000.

Lecornu's room for manoeuvre is narrow, and the numbers explain why. France carries public debt of about €3.6 trillion, equal to 120% of economic output, with a budget deficit of 5.4%. Last Wednesday, the National Assembly rejected the revenue section of the 2027 budget bill by 458 votes to zero.

Not everyone was invited on Monday. Public-sector unions were left out of the social conference and will be received separately on Friday 13 November; a decision that has deepened resentment among civil servants. The movement itself began in late September with high-school students protesting about conditions in their schools, before widening to wages, purchasing power and public services.

What Monday's talks still leave open

What Lecornu will actually announce at his press conference later on Monday remains unknown, and the announcement matters more than the meeting. A package limited to the small SMIC rise would confirm the unions' reading of the day as a communications exercise; anything broader would change the week.

Nor is it clear whether the eight-union alliance will call further action. The alliance plans to decide its next steps on Monday evening, after the outcome at Matignon, and its choice will determine whether the movement pauses or escalates. Education unions have already called a further day of strikes and demonstrations for Tuesday, whatever Monday produces, and the size of that mobilisation is untested.

Two larger questions hang over the week. The first is whether Friday's separate meeting with public-sector unions defuses civil-service anger or confirms it. The second is whether a government that lost its budget's revenue section 458–0 can pass any budget at all.

Why does a €22 rise carry the weight of a government?

Because the minimum wage has become the hinge of French politics. The SMIC is the one figure every household understands, and the gap between the government's €22 and the unions' €100 to €150 is now the visible measure of whether the state hears the anger in the streets. A rise below the symbolic €1,500 line would be read as a refusal; one crossing it by a few euros, as a gesture. Neither settles the argument about purchasing power.

The stakes reach beyond pay. Lecornu leads a minority government five months before a presidential election, and its budget has already been defeated in the National Assembly. The protest movement, which began with school pupils and now spans workers, pensioners and students, has become the arena in which the government's authority is tested week by week. What happens at Matignon will shape whether the movement loses momentum or gathers force; and whether the government can still claim to govern.

A government buying time it may not have

Read as arithmetic, Monday's offer does not close the gap; read as politics, it is the most the government believes it can afford. Farandou's condition, past €1,500, provided it does not harm employment, is the whole dilemma in one sentence. The government fears that a large rise in the minimum wage would cost jobs in small firms, a warning the small-business federation U2P has made bluntly, calling a sharp rise a catastrophe for its members. The unions reply that wages have trailed prices for years and that restraint is itself the cause of the unrest.

The shape of the day betrays the government's caution. The public-sector unions, whose members filled the November demonstrations, were not in the room; a sequencing choice that avoids one fight while inviting another on Friday. The afternoon went to a separate committee on university admissions, a reminder that the movement's original grievance, the schools, is still unresolved. The October protests that filled Paris with students began over classrooms, not pay slips.

Le Monde's reading of the morning as a likely communications exercise, a government presenting itself as attentive to salaries while mindful of employers, captures the risk. If the press conference later on Monday offers only the €22, the unions will say they were summoned to listen, not to negotiate, and the eight-union alliance will have its answer by evening.

What happens after the press conference?

The first consequence lands on Tuesday, when education unions and student groups strike and march regardless of what Lecornu announces. A large turnout would signal that the movement has a life beyond the minimum wage; a small one would suggest the talks have taken some of the pressure off. Either way, the movement's centre of gravity is shifting from the schools that started it to the pay packets that now sustain it.

The second consequence runs through the employers. The government is preparing measures to press firms into branch-level pay talks, and the negotiation over the SMIC will set the tone for those talks across every sector. If the state can move the minimum only by €22, employers will read that as the ceiling for their own rounds.

The third is the budget. A government that cannot pass the revenue section of its spending plans cannot fund the public services the protesters are defending, and the 458–0 defeat is the background to every promise made at Matignon. The wage talks are, in that sense, the easy part: the money for what comes next has yet to be voted.

The week after Matignon

Lecornu presents the government's measures at a press conference later on Monday, and the eight-union alliance decides its next steps on Monday evening. On Tuesday, education unions hold their strike and demonstrations, with students gathering at the Place de la Bastille in Paris in the afternoon. On Friday 13 November, Lecornu receives the public-sector unions at Matignon. In parliament, the battle over the 2027 budget continues, with the government seeking a path past the defeat of its revenue section.