The Daily Herald

Collectivité workers strike over ‘non-functioning’ committees

May 25, 2016

MARIGOT–Labour union Conféderation Général des Travailleurs de Guadeloupe (CGTG) mobilised a walk-out of Collectivité staff early Tuesday morning in protest at what the union said was the non-functioning of at least three consultative committees, and grievances connected to “non-functioning” of the Human Resources Department, worker’s conditions and rights, salaries, benefits, and career progression.

The demonstration in front of Hotel de La Collectivité included staff from Caisse Territorial des Oeuvres Scolaires (CTOS).
A letter initiated by the union UNSa addressed to President Aline Hanson with copies to Préfète Anne Laubies and Vice-Prosecutor Michaël Ohayon indicated that the three consultative committees: Commission Administrative Paritaire (CAP), Comité Technique (CT), and Comité d’Hygiène, Securité et des Conditions de Tavail (CHSCT), have “never seriously functioned” since they were renewed in 2014, resulting in complaints from staff in all services and categories.
CGTG spokesman Albert Blake noted the union took the Collectivité to court in February 2015 for rejecting their list for the board to represent the workers in 2014 as it considered a Guadeloupe union did not have any right to represent Collectivité workers despite having St. Martiners representing St. Martiners on the board. The union won the case as well as the subsequent appeal filed by the Collectivité.
“The tribunal ordered the Collectivité to establish these committees according to the law for civil servants but during 2015 it tried to break us down and not put those committees in place,” Blake charged. “Today there has been an effort to put the committees in place, but only sort of.
“They are not respected and internal procedures are not followed, for example an invitation to a meeting needs notice of 15 days and with all the documents ready. We’ve talked about this, we’ve signed on them and finalised them but the procedures are still not respected.”
He added a CAP meeting is supposed to have equal union members and elected officials of the Collectivité, but the last meeting held had seven union members and one elected official, President Hanson.
“It cannot work like that so we rejected that meeting,” he said.
Blake said catching up needs to be done on the careers of Collectivité agents from 2014, 2015 and 2016 because of a new reform expected to be implemented in 2017. The reform concerns a change in the rate of pay.
Workers are normally supposed to be evaluated twice a year for their commitment to the job, efficiency, etc. in order to obtain grades that allow them to climb the ladder and get more pay, but Lake said this has not been done.
“We have to be up to date in order to go to the next level to benefit from this new reform,” he explained. “We’re trying for two years to have dialogue with the Collectivité to get this going. But it keeps giving us different excuses and none of this is benefitting the workers. That’s why the union is here because we want a betterment of the services of the Collectivité and workers have to be dealt with properly.
“We’ve also heard through the grapevine that persons are being hired or promoted. Normally nobody can be hired, fired, or promoted without going through those committees first. We are not asking for anything unusual. All of this is in the law for civil servants.”
Lake expected around 750 Collectivité workers to support the demonstration from the total workforce of 1,200. Outside Hotel de la Collectivité, however, perhaps 100 were seen demonstrating but the majority of workers may have stayed home.