The Banque de France will hold two social and economic committees (CSE) next Monday and Tuesday to discuss with union representatives two important reports for the social life of the company, less than a year after two employee suicides.
The first, which will be presented on Monday, focuses on the particular case of one of these two employees who ended his life at home, in June 2023, leaving a letter outlining his working conditions.
The second report, presented on Tuesday, concerns psycho-social risks within the bank. It is the result of the work of the external firm Technologia, at the request of staff representatives last fall.
Its conclusions promise to be more severe than the investigation carried out by management, presented on January 18, also ordered after the two suicides of employees working within the fiduciary sector (which issues and collects notes and coins).
A majority of the employees questioned then judged their job satisfaction to be good or very good, the usefulness of their mission, the atmosphere or even the relationship with their colleagues and superiors.
However, the situation was reversed for workload. More than half of the agents interviewed considered their workload to be heavy or too heavy, whether in the network or in central services.
Unions regularly point out the consequences of staff cuts in the recent period. The Banque de France now has 9,300 employees, compared to nearly 14,000 employees in 2005.
The Banque de France also launched on February 7 a new restructuring plan for its fiduciary network, which will involve the closure of nine of its 23 banknote sorting and recirculation boxes in 2025, after having already closed some. 14 in 2021 and 2022.
Situations of suffering, stress, mental overload (…) exist, acknowledged the governor of the Bank of France Franois Villeroy de Galhau in the introduction to a CSE meeting on October 11, 2023, according to comments transmitted to AFP by the institution.
At the same time, he highlighted the measures in place to prevent them and called for increased mobilization in this area.
Taking the lead, he also announced the launch of a so-called Well-being at Work action program, according to him more useful than voting for a union alert across the entire Bank.
bp/abb/