Anne Hidalgo did not need this. In great difficulty in his campaign for the presidential election, the figurehead of the socialists has just suffered a heavy setback as mayor of Paris. In a decision rendered on March 24, the administrative court of Paris considers illegal the main device imagined by the Town hall so that its agents continue to work less than thirty-five hours per week, and thus escape the new law on the civil service.
Believing that the approximately 55,000 garbage collectors, police officers, librarians and other Parisian municipal agents now need a framework “clear and stable”, the elected socialists have decided not to appeal the judgment, so as not to prolong the suspense. The mayor of Paris thus loses the political and legal fight which has opposed her for several years to the government on this sensitive subject. A blow for the former labor inspector.
“This decision undermines the free administration of local authorities”, regrets Antoine Guillou, the deputy in charge of human resources. “The court is simply asking the City to respect the law, it was foreseeable, corrects Maud Gatel, of the MoDem. What a waste of time, when the text dates from 2019! » The elected Republicans are even more severe: “Anne Hidalgo voluntarily remained illegal to buy a form of social peace. But once again, reality hits her. »
The “four days of the mayor”
It all started with the law of August 2019 on the transformation of the public service. According to this text supported by the Macronist deputies, the effective working time of territorial civil servants must be identical everywhere in France to that of the State civil service, the equivalent of thirty-five hours per week. A question of fairness, according to the Minister of Transformation and the Public Service, Amélie de Montchalin. However, in Paris, the agents benefit from a more favorable treatment obtained for a long time, at the time when Jacques Chirac held the Town hall. Thanks to the “four days of the mayor” and the “four days of winter” granted then, civil servants in the capital only work an average of 1,552 hours per year, instead of the classic 1,607 hours. In many special cases, this time is even shorter.
How to apply the law without provoking a revolt of Parisian agents, reluctant to work eight more days a year for the same salary? While contesting a text ranging “against social progress”, left-wing elected officials have, as in other municipalities, imagined a complex system aimed at mitigating the real impact of the text, the application of which has been compulsory since 1is January 2022. The Town Hall has thus created new days off to partially compensate for those that the law requires to be abolished. In particular, it decided to grant all municipal officials three days of RTT, officially justified by their sursollicitation as well as the noise and pollution to which they are exposed.
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