FFaced with the health crisis, our country and our health system have been hanging by a thread. To the dedication of nurses, caregivers, doctors in the public hospital, sometimes exhausted. In the sense of duty of public school teachers, who welcomed the children in Kafkaesque conditions. To the selflessness of public transport agents, cleaners, workers and social workers. The list is long, of those agents and public services thanks to which the worst has been avoided.
Do they still hold, do they really hold? These public services that make up our daily lives have been deteriorating for years, and with them access to fundamental rights. The first to suffer were the poorest people or people with disabilities. Then, the inhabitants of working-class neighborhoods or rural areas who suffered the cascading setbacks: post office closed, then public finance center closed, then primary school classes closed, etc. This collapse is now affecting all of society – except perhaps those sheltered by great wealth.
We, citizens, association and union activists, public service agents, warn: our public services have reached a historic breaking point, with the population, with their agents and with the future. Break with the population, first. Who sees the public services becoming abusive: the delays in judgment are increasing, the overwork of the agents is no longer enough to compensate for their lack of means, counters are closing while a forced march of dematerialization is progressing.
Break with their agents, then. The rationing of their time with users makes their mission impossible. The perpetual movement of “managerial reforms” is disorganizing services. And when they alert, they have the impression of preaching in the desert, even being sanctioned.
Break with the future, finally. When the fight once morest global warming, when the training of young people or the human care of the elderly are subordinated to budgetary objectives and, in fact, sacrificed.
The fruit of social conquests
Public services are the foundation of our daily lives. They come from the social conquests and political choices of previous generations, from the National Resistance Council to the establishment of Social Security, from the nationalization of the SNCF to the creation of the public employment service. In the same way, their deterioration results from political choices. And decision-making is possible to rebuild the public services we need. The axes of renewal, we know them: access for each and everyone, throughout the territory, to all public services and equal treatment; the capacity given to agents to provide quality service; the collective definition of needs.
You have 57.35% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.
