The government intends to tighten the rules for sick leave in the public. In an interview published on Sunday in Le Parisien, the minister responsible for the Budget and Public Accounts, Laurent Saint-Martin, indicated that he was “working towards the transition to a three-day waiting period” for public employees. A hypothesis that already raises some criticism on the left. Questioned this Monday on France Inter, Manuel Bompard considers it a “scandalous measure”.
“This is a way to point the finger at the public employees of our country. If they are absent it is because they are ill, not that they like it”, judged the LFI deputy from the Bouches-du-Rhône. And continuing: “when we make this type of comparison between private and public, we generally don’t say that in the public sector salaries are lower, that a greater part of the salary is in the form of bonuses (…) “It’s a scandalous way of trying to save money”.
“When you’re sick, it doesn’t have to cost money”
Another reaction on the left, that of the environmentalist mayor of Grenoble, Éric Piolle. “When you’re sick, it doesn’t have to cost money. The government would do better to work on workplace accidents and the causes of interruptions, on the health of the entire population,” the elected official told Franceinfo on Monday.
“All fronts of the sovereign state in particular are in tension: we look at the evolution of sick leave in the police, in public education and we realize that these professions suffer from a loss of meaning, inadequate working conditions and this it is reflected in the health of all those who carry out these jobs.”
Same story with unions. The general secretary of the FO civil service, Christian Grolier, sees this measure as an “aberration”. “It is infantilizing us and making us believe that a public official is not sick when he is sick,” he ruled Monday. into the microphone of Franceinfodenouncing a “stigma of public employees”. For his part, the president of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella, said he was “in favor” of moving to a three-day waiting period, instead of the one currently in public service during sick leave.
“I am in favor of this adjustment between public employees and private sector employees on one condition: that the potential 900 million euros that would be saved (…) can be used to finance measures to improve purchasing power”, declared the frontist leader of France 2. He mentioned the payment of “overtime of some public sector workers who are not paid”. “I think, for example, of correctional officers or our law enforcement agencies,” he said.
The vice-president of the RN, Sébastien Chenu, expressed doubts to RTL regarding the “method”. “It is an avenue to be considered carefully,” he assured, saying he was “a little doubtful about the financing, that is, about what it could yield”.
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