the government begins consultations around a future reform and wants to “lift the taboo of dismissal”

Stanislas Guerini wants “let us lift the taboo of dismissal in the public service”. While he launched consultations with communities, hospitals and unions on Tuesday April 9 around his civil service reform project, expected in the fall, the Minister of Transformation and the Public Service unveiled directions the newspaper The Parisian.

“It is a distortion of the status of the civil service to consider that in the name of guaranteeing employment, we cannot separate ourselves from an agent who does not do his job. Justice means rewarding agents who are committed and sanctioning those who do not do their job sufficiently.explains Mr. Guerini to Parisian.

The bill desired by the minister is particularly geared towards merit-based remuneration for civil servants and aims to facilitate transfers from one branch to another of the civil service (which has three: State, communities, hospitals).

In a document presented on Tuesday to unions and employers, the government details a series of measures that it plans to include in its reform: systematic maintenance of remuneration in the event of transfer, easier granting of “permanent employment” to apprentices, broadening the range of sanctions in the face of “professional insufficiency”…

“The status of the civil service is not the status quo, it is not egalitarianism. It must be evolved and modernized. We have agents fully in the 21st^e century, but a system which sometimes remained stuck in the 1980s »defends Mr. Guerini in The Parisian.

Consultation without negotiation

The eight representative unions denounced on Monday a reform in their eyes “dogmatic” and who wouldn’t answer “none of the concerns expressed by public officials”. “Our organizations are not demanding” of this reform, insist in a press release the CGT, FO, CFDT, UNSA, FSU, Solidaires, CFE-CGC and FA-FP, who consider it more urgent to increase the remuneration of civil servants.

Five years after a civil service “transformation” law that they continue to denounce, the unions regret that the preparation of the next reform is taking place in the form of a simple consultation, rather than a negotiation which would have given more voice to the chapter.

Second union of civil servants, the FGF-FO thus refused to participate in Tuesday’s meeting, its general secretary, Christian Grolier, denouncing “a ministry that does not want to negotiate but impose its project”.

In a statement read at Tuesday’s meeting, the CGT Civil Service (1^er union) “is already positioning itself against a project which would be a continuation (…) of the civil service transformation law, with an emphasis on the individualization of remuneration and the development of their random and discretionary part”.

On the ministry side, it was stated before the meeting that the purpose of the meeting was “to place on the table all the objects [de concertation]without taboo, without dissimulation ».

The consultation must continue until the summer, before presenting the bill at the start of the school year. According to a provisional schedule communicated to the unions, two other plenary meetings – which bring together employers and representatives of agents – are planned for the spring, the first on May 14 and the second on June 20.