On November 19, in Toulouse, 1,700 agents of the Haute-Garonne Departmental Council demonstrated after meeting in a General Assembly. An exceptional mobilization for the department, which follows the announcement of 500 job cuts among contract agents. This social plan is imposed in response to the 165 million euros that the department is supposed to save to balance its accounts.
This amount was announced by the Occitanie region, which calculated it by adding the deficit specific to the department and the budget cuts that the Barnier government wants to impose. The Finance Bill (PLF) provides 5 billion euros less in the budget of local authorities. But as pointed out by Raphaël Croset, CGT secretary of agents of the Departmental Council, these job cuts were announced while the PLF has still not been voted on.
The president of the department, Sébastien Vincini, is a “socialist”: the newspaper Ouest-France was therefore able to write that Vincini recognized that it was a “social plan”, but that this dramatic situation deprived the brave man of sleep… that’s a weak excuse to justify 500 job cuts!
The agents of the Departmental Council understood that all staff were affected by these announcements, and that these attacks would impact their working conditions and the quality of the service they offer to the public.
The employees are demanding the abandonment of all measures impacting their working conditions, as well as the suspension of job cuts until the parliamentary debates around the PLF are over. After the AGM on November 19, the union delegates met with the Director General of Services (DGS) to present the agents' demands, an interview which followed their meeting the day before with Sébastien Vincini. As reported in the press release from the inter-union, both president and DGS made the same speech: “nothing is moving, go your way”.
For the unions, the situation is clear: the remaining employees will have to take care of the missions of non-renewed contract workers! This is the good old recipe of the bourgeoisie when we talk about public services: do as much, or even more, with fewer and fewer resources. The inter-union association (CGT-SUD-FO) calls on departmental council agents to take a renewable strike starting Tuesday, November 26. This is indeed the way to go.
The government is preparing huge cuts in public budgets. Anything that can be saved will be cut. To defend their jobs, their working conditions and the quality of the service they offer, the agents of departmental council 31 must take up the fight. The inter-union must organize general assemblies and lead an agitation campaign to explain the necessity of the renewable strike.
Finally, this strike must be extended to all public services, affected by the same austerity policies: thus, in the neighboring department of Ariège, the multi-purpose agents of the various colleges of the department (which depend on the Departmental Council of Ariège) went on strike last Thursday, November 7, because they work more than what is provided for by their internal regulations, without being paid for these overtime hours!
These struggles cannot prevail if they remain isolated. However, other sectors are mobilizing: in health, early childhood, or even the SNCF. In industry, capitalists engage in a massive wave of job destruction, and strikes break out. The confederal leaderships of the unions should prepare a large movement of renewable strikes in a growing number of sectors of the economy, whether public or private. Such a movement would lay the foundations for the overthrow of the Barnier government. This is the only way to fight against job cuts, but also to gain progress on salaries and working conditions – regardless of the content of the debates in the National Assembly.
