The administrative court of Montreuil grants forty days to elected officials of the department of Seine-Saint-Denis to apply the so-called law of transformation of the public service. Requires all civil servants to work 35 hours.
Forty municipalities make up the Seine-Saint-Denis department. But five of them were recently called to order by the Justice regarding the working hours of municipal agents.
The communist municipalities of Stains, Bobigny, Montreuil, Tremblay-en-France and Noisy-le-Sec would not comply with the application of the law of 6 August 2019, known as the transformation of the public service (entrance effective from 1 January 2022). It obliges all civil servants to work 35 hours per week, or 1607 actual hours per year. In any case, this is the view of the administrative court of Montreuil.
“The judge in the council chamber therefore considered that there was a serious doubt about the legitimacy of the refusal of the five municipalities to comply with this obligation.“, Explains the court in a press release published on its website. With an order issued on January 31, 2022, the court thus “orders the mayors of these five municipalities to guarantee the adoption of the resolutions fixing the working hours of their agents and to transmit them to the prefect of Seine-Saint-Denis, within forty days “.
The administrative judge, on the other hand, removed the request of the prefect of Seine-Saint-Denis to combine the injunction with a penalty of 1000 euros per month per agent and per month. This would have represented several hundred thousand euros.
Questioned by France 3 Paris Île-de-France, the mayor of Bobigny Abdel Sadi indicated that the municipal agents of his municipality work 1,544 hours a year, which is 63 hours less than required by law. “As soon as I arrived at the head of the Bobigny town hall, I fought for the deprecarization of many employees of the city and to ensure that a compensation system was put in place that had not been peppered since 2017. (…) In a context of social, economic and health crisis, I had other priorities besides the application of the 1607 hours.He explains.
We will have to implement the 1607 hours, it is inevitable.
Abdel Sadi, mayor of Bobigny
“We intend to take advantage of the forty days that the judge has granted us and the vagueness of the interim measures required to take the time to carry out discussions with the unions and staff.“, He explains. “We will have to implement the 1607 hours, it is inevitable. We have time, so we can do it in better conditions and in a more relaxed way.“, Recognizes the chosen one.
Previously, on January 18, 2022, the mayors of these municipalities had been brought to trial by the state for refusing to apply the increase in working hours for their officers. In a press release, Stains Mayor Azzedine Taïbi described the annual working time of 1,607 hours as “attack on the free administration of local authorities“.
For his part, the mayor of Noisy-le-Sec denounced a contradiction between the “front line” attitude of municipal agents during the health crisis to ensure the continuity of public services, and the attitude of justice.The state denounces us for not having applied the 1607h yet!“, He explains in a tweet.
