Austerity, Frustration, Precarity

During the second meeting in the cycle of annual wage talks (NAO) on October 16 management told the trade unions that 2025 will be a year under a star of budgetary “rigor”. After listing a series of commercial setbacks, management said staff must be willing to make “efforts”. Of course any cost-of-living adjustment is out of the question. Then management had the nerve to say that this isn’t yet “austerity”. But austerity is exactly what it is for staff.

The latest forecast by the Banque de France is for 2.5% inflation in 2024 and without an equivalent increase in wages – SUD’s main demand in the negotiations – our purchasing power will have fallen once again. This is a sad perspective after the many years where our salaries were frozen and the 2.0% wage hike we got in last year’s NAO (implemented from May 2024) only partially compensated for the spike in inflation following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

At the beginning of the year management rightly emphasized the importance of the French state renewing our public interest mission (MIG) and increasing our subsidy by roughly 7 million euros per year in the 2024-2028 Aims and Means Contract (COM). This is a considerable increase – but as we feared – isn’t enough to resolve the Agency’s financing problems for the period, especially when management has chosen to put the priority on repaying banks.

The result: only by keeping spending on wages steady will AFP remain financially afloat. But that means we’re losing purchasing power, much like a punctured tire that slowly loses air. Like an inattentive driver, some AFP don’t notice at first, thanks in part automatic promotions and seniority bonuses. But the tire eventually goes flat.

But to give staff a bone to gnaw on management said the annual bonus and promotion campaign will be maintained. It doesn’t hide that this is its preferred method: only individual measures for those who “merit” them. Only experience shows that management often rewards loyalty more than merit, and we suspect that they also use them to reward middle managers for the lack of just compensation for them in the 2017 workplace agreement (which SUD didn’t sign). There is also an unacceptable lack of transparency, and we know there is inequality of treatment between categories in the awarding of bonuses.

For SUD, it’s unacceptable to have only individual measures when all staff are seeing their purchasing power eroded. A hike is particularly important for those of us at the lower end of AFP’s wage scales who feel rising prices most keenly. Without cost-of-living adjustments they are slowly sinking towards the level of the minimum wage. That’s a shameful situation, as is management’s plans to get rid of echelons that have fallen below the minimum wage instead of hiking the entire wage scale.

- Breaking the 20-year ceiling -

Management also rejected our proposal to add new levels for the seniority bonus at 25, 30 and 35 years. It currently maxes out at 20, as does the guaranteed career plan for journalists. Many staff find their progression stalls at this point and it becomes a source of frustration. When we first proposed introducing new levels a few years ago some of our trade union colleagues considered us to be completely unrealistic. We’re quite happy to note that this year all trade unions demanded this in some form or another. It seems that there is now a consensus that such a mechanism is necessary to compensate for a lack of promotions.

Our proposal to create a menstrual leave was also rejected. Instead, management proposed an additional three days of working from home per month for those suffering from menstrual pain. Nearly one in ten women suffer from endometriosis and even more suffer from painful periods. The pain can frequently be disabling. Whether at home or the office it is the same inability to concentrate and difficulty moving. Flexibility to work from home doesn’t take into account that reality.

Management’s proposal to improve the pay of certain managers responds to a legitimate need to ensure that additional responsibility is adequately compensated, something the 2017 workplace agreement didn’t always ensure. SUD appreciates that management has accepted our proposal that video coordinators in French regional bureaus receive the same bonus that their photo colleagues who coordinate coverage do.

Unfortunately, management rejected our request to double the Sunday bonus from 10 to 20 euros, and to also pay it on Saturdays. Working the weekend is inconvenient. Whether you want to spend time with family or friends, the weekend is the time to do it. A modest bonus to compensate for the inconvenience.

The next NAO meeting is scheduled for November 5. Traditionally it is the third meeting where the real negotiations begin. Is management ready to admit that its five-year financial plan, only just underway, already holds nothing more for staff and that it must remedy this? Because 2029 is way too long to wait for a potential raise ! Staff won’t be able to handle this.

Paris, November 1, 2024
SUD-AFP (Solidarity-Unity-Democracy)