The day after the demonstrators against the pension reform, it was the turn of the firefighters from the North to take to the streets, this Thursday, in Lille. According to the unions, the management of Sdis points to at least 30,000 interventions that are not the responsibility of the firefighters to explain the work overload. Inadmissible for the trade unions which, them, claim recruitments in number to ensure all their missions.
According to the CGT Sdis 59, the “current situation of understaffing directly impacts the safety of the population as well as that of the firefighters”. Still according to the union, no less than 300 professional firefighters should be recruited to properly carry out daily missions.
“We reserve the right to take new, increasingly strong actions”
Since January, the inhabitants of the North have regularly seen fire trucks covered with the slogans “on strike”. And, this Thursday, it was a question of putting a little more pressure on their management because of an important deadline that is emerging: the examination of the department’s original 2023 budget which will take place on Monday and Tuesday. “It’s an end to receive that we received from our president, Jacques Houssin”, laments a trade unionist. Worse, “he tries to put his finger on these interventions which would not be our responsibility, such as raising the elderly who have fallen at home, or intervening for people in distress stranded in an elevator”, he continues.
These approximately 30,000 additional operations each year would therefore be the heart of the problem. “We, it’s our job, we are paid for that, not doing it is unacceptable”, insists the trade unionist.
For his part, the president of Sdis announced on Thursday the recruitment of 25 professional firefighters in 2023 without an increase in the budget. A Sdis which has also confirmed that its president “was also working on a five-year hiring plan”, without specifying what this meant in terms of staff. This remains far from the 300 hires demanded immediately by the unions: “If we are not heard, we reserve the right to take new actions, increasingly strong”, insists the CGT.