Teaching, administration… This Tuesday, March 19, the civil service goes on strike in France to demand better salaries. Nearly 6 million civil servants and public agents are called to stop work and take to the streets by all the unions. This is also the case for nurses, who say they are at their wits’ end, forced to keep up at hellish pace, while salaries increase slowly.
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Since Covid, these nurses at Saint-Antoine hospital in Paris have been assured: their working conditions have deteriorated. For Aurélie Jochaud, it’s because of the workforce reductions. “ When someone is missing in the kitchen to deliver breakfast, it has repercussions, she explains. The hospital is crumbling, there is less time to do things, because there are fewer and fewer of us. »
The consequence, according to Aïcha Haccoun, also a nurse, is that she has to manage many more patients. “ To compensate for this lack of staff, we are made to work more. So, twelve hour days. I’m so tired that sometimes, in the evening, I come home, go to bed, and then I tell my children to look at what’s in the fridge. And that’s not normal “, she says.
It’s a race to the shallot. We’re always running, we’re so exhausted…
Aïcha Haccoun, nurse at Saint-Antoine hospital
“ We are still in a period of fairly high inflationalso recalls Mylène Jacquot, general secretary of the CFDT public functions. Public officials are impacted, their purchasing power is impacted, so that is the first expectation. »
Little salary increase
Nursing staff at the end of their tether, and salaries which are increasing less quickly than inflation, recalls Aurélie Jochaud: “ We are at more than 20% increase in the cost of living. The last increase we all had at the hospital was €24.60 in January. Five index points. »
A sum that no longer allows Aïcha Haccoun to live properly despite the hours spent at work. “ Before, she remembers, we could have a restaurant between the four of us, because there are four of us in the family, at least once a month. Now, it’s once a quarter, because we no longer have the means. You have to make sacrifices, we do them all the time, and after a while, you get tired of it. »
To be able to continue to live with dignity from their work, these nurses will strike this Tuesday for a fair increase in their salaries. But in total, 6 million people are invited, in different sectors, to join the movement and take to the streets, by all the unions.
Public services are important for the population, they have proven their effectiveness, particularly in times of crisis. Today, more than 60,000 positions are vacant in the civil service as a whole.
Mireille Stivala, general secretary of the CGT federation of health and social action
The National Education unions are also organizing a new day of strike. They are also demanding better pay and more pleasant working conditions.
We will once again demonstrate regarding the increase in wages. Indeed, there is a first gesture that has been made, these increases are not up to what we hoped for…
Kévin Cayrier, PE teacher in Hauts-de-Seine
Emmanuel Macron and merit-based pay: union reactions
The call for strike this Tuesday was launched on January 25, just a few days after a major press conference by Emmanuel Macron.
“ For our civil servants, the president said, the main criterion for advancement and remuneration must be, alongside seniority, also merit. » A philosophy contested by Mylène Jacquot and Mireille Stivala, general secretaries of the CGT federation of health and social action.
“ We are totally opposed to this notion, we consider that public services are services that must be provided to the population and must not be subject to merit-based salaries, as if we considered that the services provided are goods. », assures the first.
“ We have 10% of public officials who earn less than 1,500 euros per month, so we cannot say that civil servants would be better paid or pay too much and that we should act solely on merit, which is a totally ideological notion. », considers the second.
For its part, on the basis of figures contested by all the unions, the French government assures that “ the purchasing power of civil servants has increased every year since 2015 “. He will nevertheless indeed face a social movement this Tuesday, demanding in particular the opening of new negotiations.
Read alsoHospital crisis in France: “working conditions are catastrophic”