They are not happy and let it be known. “Angry” clerks gathered on Monday in the courts of France to protest against a salary increase project, and to denounce the “contempt” to which their profession has been subjected for years.
They were between 150 and 200 in front of the Paris court: clerks, some of them in robes, accompanied by magistrates and lawyers who came to support. “We have a lot”, “stop the coaster”, “Angry clerks, without clerks, no justice”, could we read on their signs. “It has to stop, our function has to be recognized as such and more attractive to young people,” said Carine, 50-year-old clerk. “It’s an unknown profession, but all the judicial machinery depends on the faith of the clerks and administrative agents,” she said.
The unions received this Monday at the ministry
“Faced with contempt, anger”, “the calculations are not good”, “the eternally forgotten”, “Injustice in justice”, was it also written on the signs brandished on the steps of the Paris Court of Appeal , where about sixty people were gathered. Initiated last week, this spontaneous mobilization and “outside the unions” was caused by a project for a new index grid which will disadvantage the clerks, they believe. Several petitions were also sent to the Keeper of the Seals, Éric Dupond-Moretti.
The intersyndicale must, for its part, be received at the Ministry of Justice on Monday afternoon. “We are going there to demand what we have been asking for for a number of years: a revaluation of the profession of clerks, underpaid in relation to their skills and everything they do”, explains Hervé Bonglet, secretary general of Unsa Judicial Services. If he welcomes the recruitments planned in the latest bill by Éric Dupond-Moretti (1,800 more clerks), he believes that “it will not be enough”.
Gatherings were also held in particular in Marseille, Bobigny, Evry and Rennes, a city where around fifty clerks, supported by a few lawyers and magistrates, met at noon “so that this does not impact the litigants”.