26,000 municipal police officers are called to demonstrate this Saturday, February 3. Here are their demands.
The collective of “angry municipal police officers”, made up of several unions, is calling on the 26,000 French municipal police officers to mobilize this Saturday, February 3. The meeting was given at 2 p.m. in front of all the regional prefectures. In Paris, a procession set off from Place de la République at 1 p.m. towards city hall. This new day of mobilization is the continuation of a movement started on October 31 with a minutes strike. What are the municipal police asking?
Bonus and pensions
At the heart of their demands is the “police bonus”. The unions are demanding that this bonus of several hundred euros per month be made compulsory, that it be increased to 25% of the basic salary and included in the calculation of civil servants’ retirement. They also want to move to a higher category and are demanding a year of bonus for retirement every five years, as for national police officers and gendarmes.
Retirement is also an important point of the demands. Since the reform, “you can leave at 59 with 900 euros net per month for 30 years of service, while a national police officer will leave with at least 1,000 euros more, so we are obliged to leave at 62 or 64 years”, explains Brigadier-Chief Thierry Colomar, president of the National Federation of Municipal Police Officers of France (FNPM). However, “it’s complicated at this age to chase young delinquency,” he points out.
“We are real police officers”
Civil servants are also calling for better recognition. “Governments have been giving new prerogatives to municipal police officers for around thirty years. But at the social level, we are still at the same point,” laments Thierry Colomar. “We are real police officers,” he says. “The only difference with the national police or the gendarmerie is that we do not carry out investigations and we do not take complaints. But on public roads, we have exactly the same missions, and the risks linked to these missions.”
The government had promised negotiations after the start of the movement in October. But the reshuffle at the start of the year disrupted the calendar. The unions are therefore returning to the charge “to try to obtain a new meeting and to sit around a table to discuss the demands and above all recognition of the profession from A to Z and to put everything back together”, explains Philippe Angelelli, general secretary CFTC City of Marseille, France 3.
Especially since the municipal police officers of Marseille have another cause for concern: Tuesday January 30, Gérald Darmanin announced “an exceptional bonus, increased to 1,900 euros for police officers and gendarmes working in Ile-de-France” during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. However, Marseille also hosts Games events, like other cities outside Île-de-France. The municipal police of these cities therefore hope to be entitled to the same bonus. In the event of refusal from the government, they have a powerful pressure tool: “If nothing changes,” warns Philippe Angelelli, “we will have to make ourselves heard, before and during the Olympics.”