Personal Qualification Salary

"Personal qualification salary" (salaire à la qualification personnelle) or "lifelong salary" (salaire à vie) refers to a form of remuneration proposed by Bernard Friot and the French popular education voluntary association . At its core is the distinction between work and employment. Funded using social security contributions, it would be the building block for a new mode of socioeconomic system. The personal qualification salary consists in paying every citizen a salary by socialising wealth through social security contributions (cotisations sociales in French). According to this conception of economic value, every citizen is entitled to a lifelong salary which is attached to an irrevocable professional qualification. This theory advocates a new common definition of work which establishes a clear distinction from employment. Such a salary would not be tied to a particular post—owned by an employer—but to a political status of value-producing individuals. Incidentally, this would enable to clearly identify, in the GDP, the value produced by workers presently considered as unproductive such as house workers, retired workers, unemployed people, volunteers, and students. It is therefore a profound challenge and alternative to the capitalist logic concerning the fundamental relationship between work and remuneration: instead of paying someone after they have realized a certain number of subordinated tasks for a capitalist or company owner, citizens are paid first as a precondition to then be able to work freely. According to Bernard Friot, a third of French citizen aged 18 or more already receive a personal qualification salary, and are thus, to different degrees, freed from the labour market or market for capitalist goods and services. This fraction includes civil servants (5.5 millions in 2017), retired people (7.5 millions receiving a lifelong pension greater than 75% of their last wage), self-employed health professionals, employees from various formerly nationalised companies—SNCF; IEG; Orange; La Poste—and finally employees who benefit from a minimum salary negotiated through a branch agreement.