A week ago, 1,700 agents met in a general assembly at the call of the FO, SUD and CGT unions and voted for a one-day strike on November 26. This Tuesday, the mobilization was followed by thousands of strikers, including more than 3,000 who gathered in front of the entrance to the Haute Garonne Departmental Council in Toulouse.
Among the strikers, some contract workers threatened with losing their jobs were on strike for the first time in their lives. Agents from certain sectors were very strongly mobilized, like Frouzins' MDS (Maison des solidarité) which had more than 50 strikers out of its 60 agents. “ We had never seen this » exclaims a representative of the Force Ouvrière union.
At the origin of the anger, the brutal austerity announced by the management of the Departmental Council which wants to make 165 million euros in savings to the detriment of agents and users. Concretely, this implies a drastic reduction in subsidies to social sector associations but also a large reduction in staff.
Thus, the more than 7,000 agents who take care of numerous services throughout the Haute Garonne department will have to face the elimination of more than 500 positions. Contract workers are on the front line of this social breakdown, as one of them indicated to our microphone: “ I was promised that I would be tenured but it's a cold shower, my management called me tomorrow to tell me that my fixed-term contract will not be renewed beyond 2024 ».
An anger that is all the stronger as he denounces “ crazy money spent by management to supposedly campaign against precariousness, but behind it is putting more than 500 families in trouble. All this while people in management are giving themselves raises, the director [Sébastien Vincini] even wanted to have his office renovated, we were kicked out next door. »
In addition, management also intends to impose reorganizations of working time with the elimination of the current hourly regime which gives the right to additional RTT in compensation for 41 hours 25 minutes of weekly work. “ With that, they want to make us work more to fill the 500 colleagues they are going to fire. We cannot accept this, especially from a department that calls itself socialist. On Christmas Eve we tell them that, people are crying, it's not a joke » denounces Gilles, from the CGT of the technical park.
The anger is all the stronger because the president of the department, Sébastien Vincini, is a figure in the Socialist Party (spokesperson for Anne Hidalgo's glorious presidential campaign). If he was able to try to make people believe that he intended to “repair public services” as part of the program of the New Popular Front in the legislative elections in July, nature came back at a gallop. Even before Barnier's budget was adopted, the management of Departmental Council 31 locally adapted this austerity policy, with Sébastien Vincini himself taking responsibility in the columns of West France that what he does resembles a social plan ».
« Mr. Vincini is a member of the New Popular Front and therefore should support this approach and not anticipate budgetary decisions by announcing this plan. It is almost the only one in France to announce such a plan » denounces Stéphane, elected SUD at the microphone of Permanent Revolution.
After more than an hour of speaking, the FO, CGT and SUD inter-union called on the thousands of strikers to go on demonstration. She also called for continued mobilization with a two-hour walkout on Thursday, November 28 for a rally on the occasion of the standing committee which votes on budgets. The prospect of another day on Tuesday December 3 as well as the national strike date across the civil service on December 5 have been announced.
« We're going to need more than 24 hour days each week » says a striker during the demonstration, aware that defending jobs and working conditions can only be done through a tough fight against determined management. Stéphane from the SUD union agrees: “ We do not think that we will win alone, we think that we need an overall movement of the territorial civil service at least, even of all public services and above all to link up with social movements for the defense of public services ».
