For more than a week, professional firefighters in the metropolis of Lyon and the Rhône have been on an “indefinite strike”. Revaluation of purchasing power, implementation of a recruitment plan and elimination of a housing bonus… They denounce unfulfilled commitments on the part of superiors, while they fulfilled theirs, particularly during Paris 2024 Olympic Games “despite the cancellation of holidays”.
On Wednesday, around 300 of them blocked the city ring road before going to Part-Dieu station. “In ten years, interventions have increased from 90,000 per year to more than 140,000, without an increase in numbers, on the contrary,” affirmed the southern union during this action.
“First historic strike movement for firefighters”
This Thursday, executives will join the movement for a rally in front of the headquarters of the Departmental and Metropolitan Fire and Rescue Service (SDMIS). A “historic” action. If social movements have already been led by firefighters, it is rather rare to see management join in.
“I’ve been working in the service for more than eight years and I don’t even remember hearing about a strike among fire officers,” notes a member of Avenir Secours, the majority union in management. . Usually, conflicts are “resolved differently”. “We were never forced to reach this point,” points out the union.
Before adding: “This is the first historic strike movement for SDMIS executives. If we are here, it is to express our dissatisfaction and our feeling of lack of recognition on the part of our financiers, the department and the metropolis of Lyon. And we also want to give weight to the movement. The subject deserves it, listening is important behind it. »
The firefighters are expecting “people” for this gathering which should allow “an exchange” with management. For her part, Zémorda Khelifi, president of the SDMIS, assured, through a press release at the end of September, that she was “determined to seek favorable conditions for the continued implementation of the memorandum of understanding initiated in 2024, for the ‘year 2025’, regarding the housing bonus.
Expectations from the State
Regarding the other demands, the concerns and solutions are national. “The question of financing fire and rescue services and the fragility of our civil security model is at the heart of the Beauvau discussions on civil security, initiated at the end of April 2024, then interrupted in recent months due to the national news,” recalled the president of SDMIS.
Zémorda Khelifi thus asked the State to “take its responsibilities”. “It must provide concrete solutions to the difficulties encountered by fire and rescue services whose missions have evolved in recent years to respond to the consequences of climate change and new missions linked to rescue and emergency care,” said she pressed. Before reaffirming its “entire mobilization” to “carry out the necessary developments [du] model of Civil Security, on a national level, with the financiers of the SDMIS and the parliamentarians of the Rhône”.