Civil servants’ strike: the CFDT and the CGT demand “real negotiations”

The general secretary of the CFDT Marylise Léon and her counterpart from the CGT Sophie Binet called on Monday the government to open “immediate” negotiations on the salaries of civil servants on the eve of a day of national mobilization. Civil servant unions, united as an inter-union organization, called on the 5.7 million public employees to mobilize on Tuesday to defend their remuneration. A demonstration is notably planned in Paris. “We are asking for general increases. And above all we are asking for real negotiations,” Marylise Léon explained on Monday on RTL.

“Today, there are civil servants who have difficulty making ends meet. There are 10% - 500,000 civil servants - who earn less than 1,508 euros net per month. They are directly hit by inflation, they must be able to live from their work,” she argued. “And when the CFDT says that real negotiations are needed, everything does not come down to remuneration”, “there is also the question of working conditions, career prospects” and “a real problem of attractiveness”, continued the manager.*

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“It requires real negotiations. So I call on them to be able to open as quickly as possible. We will be in the streets tomorrow (Tuesday) to mobilize all civil servants and the people who want to support them,” added Marylise Léon. “We are on the bone. Our public services are doing very badly, they are breaking down everywhere,” said Sophie Binet on RMC/BFMTV, predicting that “very many” civil servants will be on strike on Tuesday “to finally make themselves heard and for the government to change. its budgetary choices.

The executive must “open immediate negotiations on the situation in the public service”, argued the leader of the CGT in turn, judging that “we will emerge from this crisis through collective upgrades”. “It is not normal for the purchasing power of civil servants to erode to this extent,” she insisted. “Today, French civil servants are among the lowest paid – teachers, nurses, doctors, etc. – and this creates a shortage of vocations which poses a problem for our public services to operate.”