The unions are demanding increases from 2026 and are threatening a strike at the end of September, against a backdrop of strained public finances.
The Minister of Public Accounts, David Amiel, receives public service unions on Wednesday for a meeting on remuneration. This meeting, eagerly awaited by trade union organizations, comes as unions are demanding salary increases from 2026 and threatening a strike at the end of September.
A meeting under union pressure
The meeting, initially scheduled for Monday, was postponed due to the consideration of a motion of censure in Parliament. This Wednesday, the eight representative trade union organizations in the public service (CGT, FO, CFDT, UNSA, FSU, Solidaires, CFE-CGC and FA-FP) are invited to Bercy to discuss the thorny issue of remuneration. The unions are urgently demanding better salaries, as discussions begin to provide France with a budget.
The unions believe that the cut is almost full, after three years of freezing the value of the index point on the basis of which part of the remuneration of civil servants is calculated, but also the elimination of a bonus in favor of purchasing power and a phenomenon of “compaction” of the index scales which hinders career development. Their demand was reinforced by the war in the Middle East and its consequences, in particular an inflationary shock and a surge in fuel prices.
In mid-April, the eight union organizations left a meeting on wages prematurely, deploring the lack of immediate measures and demanding the opening of negotiations. They put even more pressure on the government at the end of June by calling for mobilization on September 29, without excluding a strike.
The meeting is being held the day after an alert committee on public finances where the executive reduced its growth forecast for 2026, bringing it from 0.9% to 0.7%, and where it now considered “difficult to achieve” its objective of a public deficit reduced to 5% in 2026. The government is announcing 3 billion additional savings in the hope of meeting the deficit target. It now plans at least 9 billion euros in savings to be made in 2026 and no longer just 6 billion. A context which limits the room for maneuver regarding salary increases in the public service.
The government does not seem inclined to respond favorably to the unions’ demands, especially in a context of degraded public finances. David Amiel, however, established the diagnosis of a civil servant remuneration system that has become “obsolete”.
Civil servant salaries have been a point of crystallization of tensions since the start of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency.
