The discovery made more than one official jump when they opened their personal mailbox. An email, sent by the Directorate General of Public Finance (DGFIP), was sent to “all” agents, according to the unions, containing a message from the Minister of Transformation and Public Service Stanislas Guerini. It contains a link to a video of about six minutes where it presents the measures of the reform, in particular those concerning civil servants. Several public service unions, including the CGT, FO and Unsa, have denounced an approach to defend the disputed pension reform project.
“In the video, Stanislas Guerini speaks directly to the agents and explains the reform as if it had already been adopted as it is in Parliament”, criticizes Céline Verzeletti, co-secretary general of the federal union of state trade unions CGT . The email was sent to the private address that the agents “provide for their tax declaration” and not to “their professional address”, according to the Unsa public service.
The CNIL “will take a position later”
For the Force Ouvrière (FO) confederation, the Ministry of Public Service has “diverted the purpose” of the use of the e-mail addresses of citizens for the purposes of “political propaganda”. FO declares having “immediately” seized the National Commission for Computing and Liberties (CNIL) in order to “enforce the protection of the personal data of all agents”.
The privacy watchdog said it is doing some checks. “At this stage of the investigation, the CNIL is therefore not yet in a position to comment on the compliance of the use of personal data that has been made. She will take a position later,” she said in a statement. The ministry explained that “this video message is HR content relaying information on their pensions to public servants”. This video had already been uploaded on the ministry’s website, he added.
The ministry assured that “no contact file transmission was made” between the DGFIP, which has the e-mail addresses communicated by public officials for payroll information in particular, and the ministry. According to the same source, “this procedure has already been applied in the past, with for example the distribution of a letter to agents by the Ministry of Transformation and Public Service on complementary social protection”.