It is a new movement. Tuesday, September 13, employees of the NGO Forum-Refugiés, one of the largest state service providers in terms of reception and accommodation of foreigners in France, walked out in several places in the territory. According to the management of the NGO, there were a few dozen while, according to one of the organizers of the strike, there were nearly 200, out of a total of 500 employees. A party had gathered in Villeurbanne (Rhône) in front of the headquarters of the NGO, whose devices are spreading throughout the south-eastern quarter of France.
This movement, organized outside the trade unions, has as its starting point the non-payment of the “Ségur premium” to some of the employees of Forum-Réfugiés who are not considered to be part of social work. The salary increase of 183 euros net, decided by the government during the Segur de la santé then gradually extended to social workers, in particular in the associative sector, rewards those who were on the front line during the health crisis.
However, the staff of Forum-Réfugiés who are on strike denounce “unequal attribution” of the premium from which certain devices and functions are excluded. On August 30, already, a letter signed by forty executives of the NGO had been sent to the management to denounce a “feeling of contempt, injustice and lack of consideration felt by employees” excluded from the premium.
Vincent (all first names have been changed at the request of those interviewed) is a hotel social worker in a residential center in Clermont-Ferrand. Reached by telephone, like several other strikers, he explained to the World that, by virtue of his position, he does not benefit from a salary increase. “While we all have a strong social dimension in our work”he defends.
“General fed up”
“A secretary may, for example, be called upon to do support work, such as renewing a foreigner’s complementary health insurance or filing their asylum application”in turn illustrates Idris, a striker for whom the unequal payment of the Ségur bonus acted as a “a drop of water that broke the camel’s back” and reveals a “general fed up”.
An open letter sent by the strikers to the press evokes in turn a “worse working conditions”a “very high turnover within the workforce”an increase in the workload, the complexity of the law applicable to foreigners and “the lack of support from the management in the face of illegal prefectural practices”the “precarization” accompanied audiences or even a “rise in violence”.
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