Unions called on France’s 5.7 million public sector workers to walk out on Tuesday to demand better pay and conditions a month after the government had announced public spending cuts of about 10 billion euros, according to RFI.
Union representatives claim that wages have failed to follow inflation while working conditions have deteriorated.
We urgently need to open negotiations to improve career prospects and take general measures to improve pay.
They called for “an immediate 10 per cent increase in the value of the index point,” which France used to determine public sector wages. Mylène Jacquot, a senior official from France’s CFDT union, stated:
“We are still in a period of quite high inflation. Public sector workers’ purchasing power is impacted, so that’s our primary demand.”
Tuesday’s protests are expected to hit hospitals and schools heavily as over 100 demonstrations are planned across the country. The call for strike action came on 25 January, just days after President Emmanuel Macron had revealed plans to review public sector salaries. He declared:
The main criteria for promotion and remuneration for our civil servants should be merit, in addition to length of service.
However, Mireille Stivala, a leading representative of the CGT union, rejects the introduction of merit-based wage increases, because she believes that “services delivered to the population should not be subject to merit-based salaries… as if they were merchandise.”
Official figures revealed that the average gross monthly salary in the French public sector in 2021 was €2,500. Teachers’ gross monthly salaries ranged from €1,900 to €3,300, depending on experience. Nursing has very similar pay scales.
Jacquot stated that “10 per cent of public sector workers earn less than €1,500 per month,” accusing the changes of being “a totally ideological notion.”
FO is one of several unions threatening to extend the strike from 19 March to 8 September to cover the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games if workers hired during the Games are not sufficiently compensated. Minister for Transformation and Public Administration, Stanislas Guerini, recently promised bonuses of between 500 and 1,500 euros to civil servants working across the capital during the Games in order to ease tensions.
Guerini also revealed that the government was working on a plan to help employees with childcare, including daycare centres for on-duty civil servants and around 1,000 spots in summer camps. Employees with children would also be able to claim bonuses of between €200 and €350 per child, depending on their family circumstances.
However, the unions believe that this is not sufficient. Solidaires-FP has demanded that all public sector workers who will have to work during the Games should receive the same compensation, in line with the €1,900 bonus already promised to police officers and gendarmes.
Last Thursday, Guerini presented unions with figures showing that the government has spent €13.8bn on public sector salaries since 2022.
