Work more for less? Why?

The negotiations on the so-called Grand Accord are going nowhere: management wants to increase working hours but provides neither concrete plans nor convincing arguments.

Conclusions of the SUD-AFP Document :

Cards on the table, Mr Hoog!

Everything indicates that the Hoog Plan is aimed at making staff compensate for the loss of subsidies from the French state. The risk of the Hoog Plan is that it will touch off an infernal spiral where each time we make savings for the agency the state takes them away.

It is essential that the CEO return to the negotiations (he has attended only the opening session) so he can answer the key questions:

• What is the amount of savings to be generating by the various measures proposed in the Grand Accord, in particular by increased working hours?

• How much of those savings does AFP stand to lose due to the French state under-compensating the agency for its public interest mission?

• Is management planning to bring itself into compliance with tax laws by cutting benefits – i.e. robbing Peter to pay Paul?

• How does management plan to get the agency out of this crisis? Or, when will we be begin negotiating Hoog Plan 2?

Without answers to these questions, the negotiations on the Grand Accord will remain hobbled by a lack of sincerity.

At a time when hundreds of thousands of employees and youths are taking to the streets in defense of the labor code, it is clear that AFP’s future is directly linked to the government’s austerity policies: a reduction of public spending and dismantling legal guarantees of benefits in order to boost the competiveness of companies.

Our salaries and benefits are at risk from these changes and AFP staff will be directly impacted by the outcome of the public opposition to the reform of the labor law.

At AFP, as elsewhere, we need to push for alternatives!

➢ End austerity!
➢ Withdraw the El Khomri reform to the labor law!
➢ Halt tax fraud, no gifts to CAC-40 CEOs and their shareholders!
➢ Don’t concentrate wealth, spread it!
➢ Boost hiring, cut the work weak to 32 hours!

Paris, 7 April 2016
SUD-AFP (Solidarity-Unity-Democracy)