Modernize the public sector and better protect its agents: for his return, the Minister of the Public Service Stanislas Guerini posted Friday near Lyon two priorities and made a few announcements, coldly welcomed by the unions.

“The first thing that the public employer owes to its agents is physical protection”, he hammered during a speech at the Regional Institute of Administration of Villeurbanne, in the Lyon region, partially burned down during the early summer riots.

In addition to an “ambitious” plan for the protection of public officials, Stanislas Guerini especially took advantage of his visit to the Rhône to announce a future bill intended to continue efforts to modernize the public sector.

The text, whose timetable has not been specified, must first “better reward the merit of agents”, by expanding the individual and collective incentive schemes in the public service.

At present, bonuses already make it possible to reward the individual performance of the 5.7 million civil servants and contract workers in the public sector, but they only represent a minority part of their remuneration.

“Always more individualization (of remuneration, editor’s note), that has its limits”, worried with AFP Mylène Jacquot, general secretary of the CFDT Public functions (3rd union of the public sector), which is in conversely favorable to collective profit-sharing.

Solidaires Finances publiques (6th union) for its part described merit pay as an “unfair and clientelist system”, in a press release published Friday afternoon.

The minister must receive one by one the eight representative unions of the public sector from September 18.

Secretary General of the FGF-Force Ouvrière (2nd), Christian Grolier regrets that the minister did not wait for these exchanges with the unions to announce his bill.

“Social dialogue can be learned! There are some who have not followed all the lessons”, he was annoyed with AFP.

Stanislas Guerini nevertheless endeavored to reach out to the unions by affirming his desire to reach an agreement with them “in the very next few weeks” on the financing by the public employer of the provident fund (disability, incapacity, death insurance) , a case that has been pending since the spring of 2022.

Promised in June, the exceptional bonus of 300 to 800 euros gross for the worst paid state and hospital civil servants will be paid from October, added Mr. Guerini.

But this bonus will be optional in communities, which employ 2 million public officials.

It “must be compulsory” in the territorial public service, respondent Friday by press release the FA-FPT (8th union).

Apart from remuneration, the bill announced Friday must also “fluidify” the careers of public officials, by making the promotion system more flexible or by facilitating the transition from one branch of the public service to another.

“The reality is that of a mayor who cannot promote a talented agent, because he is constrained by rules which leave too little flexibility”, regretted Mr. Guerini on Friday.

The last major civil service reform law dates from 2019.

Denounced by the unions, it had facilitated the use of contractual agents in the public sector and laid the foundations for the reform of the senior civil service.

The government’s effort to modernize the public service must also go through an experiment in artificial intelligence (AI) in the coming weeks to meet user demands.

Initially supposed to be carried out with 200 public officials, the experiment will finally be carried out by a thousand volunteers, who will test three major generative AI software programs (ChatGPT, LLaMA and the French Bloom).

In terms of the protection of agents, the plan outlined on Friday should in particular make it possible to strengthen the protection by the public employer of agents who are victims of threats or attacks and to improve the support for the latter.

Contacted by AFP, the general secretary of the UFSE-CGT (1st union) Céline Verzeletti insists on the importance of making existing systems work before considering the creation of new tools.

Thus, “we are entitled to functional protection” provided by the employer, she illustrates, but “often, when we ask for it, we are refused it.”

09/01/2023 20:35:11 –         Paris (AFP) –         © 2023 AFP