The public service unions are received by Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu this Friday, November 13 at 9:30 a.m. and are awaiting announcements on salaries, a few days after a boost to the minimum wage which does not concern them and before a strike announced to the public on November 17. Having remained a dead letter for a long time, the request from the union representatives of the 5.8 million public employees to meet the head of government was finally successful.
This meeting should in particular make it possible to “examine as a priority concrete measures” likely to improve the situation of public employees, “paying particular attention to agents with the lowest incomes”, according to a letter from the Prime Minister to the unions.
As early as July, the executive ruled out a general increase and announced that it would freeze for a fourth consecutive year the value of the index point on the basis of which the basic remuneration of public officials is calculated. The Minister of Public Accounts David Amiel had notably argued for a constrained budgetary context, while the public deficit should reach 5.4% of GDP in 2026. A uniform revaluation of 1% of the value of the index point would cost the State 2.4 billion euros, which is “not possible”, his office argued.
Unacceptable for the unions which denounce the “smicardization” of agents, all in a context of high inflation which strains their purchasing power. And this situation deteriorates a little more with each new increase in the minimum wage.
The basic salary of public agents is determined by salary scales, and as the minimum wage is increased, it catches up and exceeds the lowest salaries of agents, which induces a “settling”: the categories of agents slightly above the minimum salary find themselves aligned with this increased minimum wage.
Consequences: a growing number of agents stagnate for many years at low income levels and hundreds of thousands of others, whose basic salary is lower than the minimum wage, must receive compensatory compensation (known as “differential”), because the law prohibits any remuneration below the minimum wage. With the increase in the minimum wage announced in June, 862,000 agents received this compensation. And with the new boost announced on Monday, more than a million could benefit. According to estimates from the collective of agents Le Sens du service public, there are 1.1 million of them who receive a basic salary below the minimum wage, or nearly 20% of agents.
“To my knowledge this is unheard of and it is the consequence of the salary policies implemented for 10 years,” laments Caroline Chevé, general secretary of the FSU. For the agents benefiting from the differential compensation it is the “double penalty”, adds Christian Grolier of Force Ouvrière Civil Service, “they remain on minimum wage and lose for the future because they do not contribute to a salary which corresponds to the minimum wage”, he denounces. When asked, Bercy did not communicate the exact number of agents whose base salary would fall below the legal minimum wage and who would therefore benefit from compensation.
After the strike of September 29, then that of November 5, all the union organizations except the CFDT called a strike on November 17, including the two main ones in the Civil Service, the CGT and Force Ouvrière. After the first unsuccessful meetings in Bercy this week, where the government did not satisfy the majority of unions, the meeting in Matignon looks like a last chance.
The executive could propose raising the basic salaries of agents who have the lowest levels of remuneration, and receive compensation to reach the minimum threshold of the minimum wage. This would allow a certain number of them to be removed from this system, without them receiving more than the minimum wage.
This path had already been outlined by David Amiel at the beginning of October. It would then have allowed some 400,000 beneficiaries of this compensation to exit, a figure which is no longer relevant since the new boost to the minimum wage on Monday.
