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The "arduousness" system is based on the assessment and monitoring of workers' exposure to exposure prevention factors, on the "arduousness" account and the points and rights accumulated by workers within this framework, as well as on the arduousness prevention measures to be implemented. Until now, the general operation was as follows:
- ASSESSING employee exposure
- FORMALIZING results on individual sheets
- TRANSMISSION of results to administration
Since the January 2014 law on pension reform, employees subject to one or more factors of hardship have been entitled to a hardship account in which they accumulate, in the form of points, rights: granting of training to access less "difficult" jobs, the possibility of working part-time (without loss of pay) finally early retirement may be considered.
Law no. 2015-994 of August 17, 2015 on social dialogue and employment (known as the "Rebsamen Law") has modified this system, as announced several months ago, particularly with regard to exposure assessment methods and the formalization of results enabling the penibility account to be topped up.
1) Abolition of the exposure prevention sheet (known as the "pénibilité sheet")
The "Rebsamen" law replaces the "fiche individuelle de prévention de la pénibilité" with a declaration by the employer to the organization managing the "compte personnel de prévention de la pénibilité". Employers are now required to declare their employees' exposure to risk factors directly, via the annual declaration of social data (DADS), without having to draw up a form beforehand.
As a reminder, the Déclaration Sociale Nominative (DSN) will replace the Déclaration Annuelle des Données Sociales (DADS) on January 1, 2016. CARSAT/CNAV/MSA, the organizations managing the personal account for the prevention of arduous working conditions, must record the points corresponding to the data declared by the employer, and inform the employee of the points accumulated each year.
2) Securing extended branch agreements and approving professional reference frameworks
Under the current system, employers can determine the exposure of their employees:
- Or by assessing exposure based directly on the factors defined in the Labor Code (article D. 4161-2 of the Labor Code);
- Or by relying on "typical work situations" corresponding to exposure in excess of the hardship thresholds defined within the framework of industry-wide collective agreements.
In order to facilitate this assessment of employees' exposure to arduous work according to professional standards, it is now planned to :
- that branch agreements can directly determine which occupations are exposed to arduous working conditions in terms of exposure thresholds, taking into account individual and collective protection;
- in the absence of an extended branch agreement, workstations, professions or work situations exposed to conditions exceeding the hardship thresholds may also be defined by a branch professional reference framework, provided that this is approved by ministerial decree.
In order to ensure the security of approved professional benchmarks and extended branch agreements, the legislator has specified that an employer who applies them to declare the exposure of his workers may not be subject either to the penalty provided for in the event of inaccurate declaration, or to late penalties and surcharges for the regularization of basic or additional contributions. At the time of writing, no agreement or reference framework has yet been published. Depending on the business, this work is a long-term undertaking...
3) Contributions to the "compte de prévention de la pénibilité
The minimum rate of the additional contribution paid by employers to the fund responsible for financing the rights associated with the personal account for the prevention of arduous work has been lowered:
- Increase from 0.3% to 0.1% of remuneration or earnings for employees exposed to a hardship factor,
- Increase from 0.6% to 0.2% of remuneration or earnings for employees who have been simultaneously exposed to several hardship factors.
Maximum rates remain unchanged. It should be noted that companies are exempt from their basic contribution in 2015 and 2016. In addition, the time limit for employees to appeal against the acquisition of points on their account has been reduced from three to two years. Lastly, the period during which the organizations managing the Compte Personnel de Prévention de la Pénibilité (personal account for the prevention of arduous work) can make adjustments to the account has been reduced from 5 to 3 years (after the end of the year in respect of which points were or should have been recorded). All these changes came into force on August 19, 2015.