Workless workers’ decades on French councils payroll
Thirty-two council workers in just one department are still being paid years after their jobs disappeared.
The staff, such as water workers and binmen, mostly lost their jobs in the 1990s but they are costing councils in the Var €1million a year.
Their pay ranges from €5,484 a year for a part-time care worker to €29,624 for a technician.
Now a law passing through parliament aims to end the strange situation of council workers without jobs being paid to do nothing for years.
Officially described as “momentarily deprived of work”, some local authority workers are paid for decades after their original posts are axed, as recently highlighted in an audit report.
There were estimated to be 442 council workers affected nationwide in 2016, and one of the sections of the new bill on “transformation of the civil service” aims to stop this.
The Chambre Régionale des Comptes for the Paca (Sud) region found in its audit that some of the 32, aged between 45 and 65 in 2016, had even had pay rises due to the length of time they had been on the books.
A spokeswoman for the body told Connexion most of the workers lost their jobs in the 1990s when municipal water and rubbish collection services were privatised in Toulon and Le Seyne-sur-Mer.
Currently, fonctionnaires have a job for life and if their post is lost, they are taken charge of by a centre de gestion, like a public sector Pôle Emploi.
Only if three offers at the same levels of competence and salary have been made and rejected can they be sacked.
The spokeswoman said: “In this case, Var department’s centre de gestion was not able to offer three viable job offers to these 32 people.
“Councils in the area did not have jobs meeting their skills, as most of the services requiring their skills had been privatised, and many of the workers did not have skills which could be transferred to other departments.
“The longer they were out of work, the more difficult it became to place them.
“There was no budget allocation for retraining either, and the managers at the centre de gestion had the workers on the books without knowing anything about them.”
She said some could have qualified for early retirement packages but chose not to take them so they would stay on the books as employees longer and also boost pension entitlements.
At least one had found a loophole where he was able to work part-time as an accountant for a private company while still getting his fonctionnaire’s salary.
The spokeswoman said the Var situation was unusual because of the numbers concerned.
Local authorities have been encouraged for at least 10 years to cut staff numbers by successive governments.
Under the planned new law, under debate this summer, there will be new rules on how long someone can keep being paid.
The latest draft refers to a reduction in pay by 10% per year for those already “deprived of work” for more than two years when the law comes in. This would start one year afterwards.
They must also work out a personalised plan for how they aim to get back to work.
Once the law comes in, those who have been in this situation for more than 10 years would cease to be paid after a year.
