The Department of Haute-Garonne is one of the first to have shown the color. Brutal. The community, which said it was forced to reduce spending in order to « achieve a total effort of 160 million euros »will cut 500 jobs out of a total of 7,000 agents. An announcement that fell like a blow and against which 2,000 people demonstrated on Tuesday, November 26 in the streets of Toulouse.
As for the Department of Hérault, which faces a deficit of 100 million euros and whose budget vote is postponed until the second half of March 2025, no precise announcement has yet been made, but we know already that the payroll will be put to contribution. « Very difficult decisions are being made, others will have to be made to hope to complete this budget (…). I will not hide from you that we must consider a reduction in numbers »indicates in a video communication on Youtube Pascal Perrissin, Director General of Services (DGS) of the Department of Hérault.
« We are not in denial, we know that the payroll will have to be affected to make the necessary savings. But we need to be vigilant about how it will be impacted. And at present, I do not have concrete data on the number of jobs affected »indicates Sandrine Pétulla, general secretary of the interco 34 CFDT union, herself an agent at the Department. « What the departmental council officially announces to us is the non-replacement of retirements and the non-renewal of short-term contract workers. », she continues. The community « also mentions the pooling between services and even the closure of certain services », with the risk « an increased workload for agents who will remain on the job » and/or « a loss of quality of public service provided to the citizens of Hérault ».
A situation for which the Department is in no way responsible, considers Sandrine Pétulla: « We do not at all question the way in which the departmental council conducted its budget. We are victims of a lack of state funding. »
« Local authorities will all, at different levels, do the same thing », fears Yvan Garcia, head of the CGT Territorials 34 and member of the higher council of the territorial civil service. Him too pointe « the disengagement of the State which means that at the end of the chain, our communities, obliged to present a balanced budget, can no longer function ».
Public sector agents representing, in the operating budget of a local authority, « at least 50-55% and very often 65% »they are « a variable [l’autre est l’investissement, Ndlr] which can hardly be spared by the savings that communities will have to make. We have bad blood to make », he predicts. Starting with contract agents, with whom local authorities have gotten into the habit of replacing, for some time now, local civil servants. « The Guérini law, under the previous mandate, developed contractualization in relation to civil servant status. There, the situation caused by the government will favor the elimination of these contract workers, not for the benefit of tenured civil servants but to the detriment of a certain amount of access to public services. »deplores the head of the CGT Territorials 34.
