The administrative court of Montreuil gives forty days to the elected officials of the department of Seine-Saint-Denis to apply the so-called law of transformation of the public service. It requires all civil servants to work 35 hours.
Forty municipalities make up the department of Seine-Saint-Denis. But five of them have recently been called to order by Justice regarding the working time of municipal agents.
The communist town halls of Stains, Bobigny, Montreuil, Tremblay-en-France and Noisy-le-Sec would not comply with the application of the law of August 6, 2019, known as the transformation of the public service (entry effective January 1, 2022). It obliges all civil servants to work 35 hours per week – that is 1607 effective annual hours. This is in any case the point of view of the administrative court of Montreuil.
“The judge in chambers therefore considered that there was a serious doubt about the legality of the refusal of the five municipalities to respect this obligation.“, explains the judicial body in a press release published on its website. In an order issued on January 31, 2022, the court thus “enjoins the mayors of these five municipalities to ensure the adoption of the deliberations fixing the working time of their agents and to transmit them to the prefect of Seine-Saint-Denis, within forty days”.
On the other hand, the administrative judge removed the request of the prefect of Seine-Saint-Denis to match the injunction with a monthly penalty of 1000 euros 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 commune work 1544 hours per year, or 63 hours less compared to what the law imposes. “As soon as I arrived at the head of the town hall of Bobigny, I fought for the deprecarization of very many staff in the city and to ensure that a compensation scheme was put in place which had not been peppered since 2017. (…) In a context of social, economic and health crisis, I had other priorities than applying the 1607 hours.he explains.
We will have to implement the 1607 hours, it is inevitable.
Abdel Sadi, Mayor of Bobigny
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“We intend to use the forty days that the judge granted us and the vagueness of the provisional measures requested to take the time to carry out the discussions with the trade unions and the 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 serene way.“, recognizes the chosen one.
Previously, on January 18, 2022, the mayors of the said municipalities had been brought before the court by the State for refusing to apply the increase in working time for their agents. In a press release, the mayor of Stains Azzedine Taïbi described the annual working time of 1,607 hours as a “violation of 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 is suing us for not having applied the 1607h yet!“, he explains in a tweet.
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