2023-06-12 17:22:57
Will they get the general raise they’ve been asking for for months? The government receives this Monday in Paris the eight trade unions of civil servants to reveal to them the wage measures which it envisages in order to cushion the persistent shock of inflation.
Faced with soaring prices and especially food products, the unions, united by their opposition to the pension reform, unanimously demand a general increase, of varying magnitude depending on the organization. While one in five public officials is paid the minimum wage, “piecemeal patching is no longer on the agenda,” warned the CGT, the first union in the public sector, on Friday.
A salary increase of “10% minimum” demanded
The salary increase must be “10% minimum for everyone”, again pleaded this Monday on franceinfo Benoît Teste, the general secretary of the FSU. “Is there a trick in not wanting to revalue all salaries and therefore not wanting to talk about salaries in the summons for this afternoon? I obviously don’t want that, but perhaps we won’t have any general measures. And that would be dramatic, ”lamented the union representative.
The organizations should be fixed this Monday at 2:30 p.m. on the intentions of the government. The executive seems determined to offer a boost to the lowest paid civil servants, but it maintains the vagueness on possible general measures which would benefit all of the 5.7 million public officials.
The Minister of Public Service, Stanislas Guerini, has already received the unions one by one at the end of May. “We have heard” the unions’ desire for a general increase, we are assured at the ministry. But in a constrained budgetary context, “the efforts (…) must be concentrated on the purchasing power in particular of low wages”, adds one from the same source.
A revaluation in the summer of 2022
The salary of State agents, communities and hospitals has already been increased by 3.5% in the summer of 2022, a gesture whose cost to public finances has been estimated at 7.5 billion euros in full year. Whatever wage arbitration is chosen, it risks falling short of the expectations of the unions, which often demand a two-digit increase.
Stronger than the previous ones, the 3.5% increase last summer did not lead to an “equivalent increase in the purchasing power of public officials”, regretted Friday Le Sens du service public, a think tank essentially composed of executives from the sector.
Beyond wages, the government wants to renew a lasting dialogue with the unions, which for a time boycotted official meetings at the ministry to protest against the postponement to 64 of the legal retirement age.
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