Emmanuel Macron has taken France by surprise by unveiling an “unprecedented” plan to offer state workers voluntary redundancy in a drive to shrink the bloated public sector.
After successfully pushing through a labour reform last year, the French president is now turning his attentions to the public sector in a country with more than 5.5 million people on the government payroll.
During his campaign he pledged to cut the number of government employees by 120,000 over five years, including 50,000 for the central government.
The former investment banker’s government also announced plans to increase the use of merit-based pay for civil servants and put more government workers on private-sector contracts.
“You can’t pretend to want to transform the country and say the public sector is some kind of protected fortress which shouldn’t be transformed, which should never be adapted,” said Mr Macron on a trip to Tunisia on Thursday.
Anadolu Agency
The move drew howls of disapproval from hardline unions with the state sector’s biggest union, CGT, calling it a “head-on attack on the public sector”.
Solidaires, another leftist union, set it would “dynamite” the civil service.
Unions are meeting next Tuesday to decide whether to take industrial action over the plan and other measures.
Prime minister Edouard Philippe said the government expected turbulence.
"There is no doubt we may hurt some sensitivities, some situations we got used to," said Mr Philippe.
"But you can’t fix a country, you can’t aim high, without being aware that you must shake and change some of these situations sometimes."
There has been a limited voluntary redundancy scheme in place since 2008 but not on this scale.
JACQUES DEMARTHON/AFP
Budget minister Gerald Darmanin said: "It wouldn’t be a voluntary redundancy plan for everybody, of course. It would be a way to adjust our public services.”
Another aspect of the reform would enable the French to fill out 100 percent of official forms online by 2022 as part of a digitisation drive.
France’s state auditor last month warned that the government was a long way from redressing public finances and must act swiftly despite healthier than expected growth forecasts.
Mr Macron’s latest assault on a Gallic "taboo", as financial daily Les Echos put it, comes at a sensitive time for the 40-year old president.
An Elabe poll out on Friday suggested that public confidence in Mr Macron had fallen by four points to 38 per cent this month, putting roughly on a par with the unpopular François Hollande at this point in his mandate.
In particular, the president has lost favour among the working and rural classes, many of whom believe his policies favour the rich but won’t improve their purchasing power.
Click Here: NRL Telstra Premiership
Comments are closed