CHAPTER 11

Human resources and employee benefits

The Posts and Telecommunications reform of 1990 made the management of the two public operators, La Poste and France Télécom, autonomous, although they continue to employ mostly civil service personnel. Due to this, the task of the DGPT in the area of human resources and employee benefits has a unique feature: its actual role is not limited to ensuring that personnel policies are in compliance with guidelines set by law, but extends to include the drawing up of all the statutory texts covering the civil service employees of both La Poste and France Télécom.

The human resources policy of La Poste and France Télécom

1.1. Employment policy

Of the 2,000,000 employees in the civil service in France, 450,000 work for La Poste and France Télécom, which means that any measure affecting the civil service will have an impact on the management of human resources by the two state-owned companies.

The direct provision of family benefits

A long-term effort is clearly necessary in order to deal with the specific features of these two companies. This was evident, for example, in the case of maintaining the direct provision by the two operators of family benefits to their personnel. The decree published after a series of interministerial negotiations has made it possible not only to confirm the continuity of this direct service but also to lay down a legal foundation for the assessment base for the employer's contribution, based solely on the payments retained for pensions. It should be noted that the seven Ministries involved used this method in order to make similar provisions in the same text for all the ministerial departments.

The organisation of the working week

The DGPT played an important role in drawing up regulations on the organisation of the working week, especially as concerns trials with part-time employment on a year-round basis. These new provisions, which are likely to change the structure of work at the public operators, are obviously important; it is in this spirit that France Télécom sought to begin work on a benefits package which, based on part-time work, would encourage the employment of young people from disadvantaged areas. On this same point, La Poste has decided to expand part-time work for management and non-management personnel and to try to find the most favourable systems for job flexibility.

Apprenticeships

As part of a trial effort throughout the entire public sector, France Télécom and La Poste have committed themselves to developing apprenticeship programmes. This was formalised in agreements signed with the trade unions; these texts provide that in the next two years (1994 and 1995), each of the two public operators shall recruit 500 apprentices, with the explicit objective of integrating the maximum number of young people possible at the end of their training, either through a competitive procedure, as the texts provide, or as contract personnel.

Recruiting personnel with disabilities

At the initiative of the Minister of Civil Service, La Poste and France Télécom have signed agreements to expand the employment of the disabled and to integrate them into the business world, both by specific training programmes and through adjustments to the structure of specific jobs.

A more balanced distribution of jobs around the country

The DGPT maintains an ongoing working relationship with the two public operators and works directly with the officials in charge of public decentralisation for the Ministry of the Interior and for Decentralisation in order to monitor the state of progress of the companies' mandated plans to decentralise services and redistribute jobs to the provinces.

At the end of 1994, the results for operations that had already been completed were as follows: for La Poste, 1,207 employees, and for France Telecom, 716 employees. It should be emphasized that this is the result of a significant financial effort by the state-owned companies, as the average cost per decentralised job comes to

Ffr 240,000 for France Télécom and to Ffr 136,000 for La Poste.

Developing a more congenial reception in the public services

In this same spirit, the two public operators were asked to help promote a more congenial customer reception in their dealings with the public. Together with all the Ministerial departments concerned and the large state-owned companies and trade associations, La Poste and France Télécom signed a charter with the objective of improving customer reception. Since then, a number of experiments have been undertaken, particularly as part of developing administrative multi-skill functioning and diversifying activity.

Helping to maintain public services in disadvantaged neighbourhoods

Finally, in order to help keep up public services in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, two Orders now make it possible to grant employees working in these neighbourhoods advantages such as shortened requirements for seniority and priority for transfers.

1.2. Human resources policy

As part of its human resources policy, the DGPT helps define the guidelines and objectives of the Public Interest Grouping (groupement d'intérêt public - GIP), which was formed during the PTT reform in order to ensure common labour management by the two operators. The DGPT, which holds a seat on the managing committee of this GIP, has the task of maintaining the level of employee benefits in the sector as well as its unified management, while ensuring the independence of the trade union bodies.

The DGPT participates in the preparation of the regulations applicable to La Poste and to France Télécom concerning occupational health and safety, working conditions, and occupational preventative medicine.

The DGPT monitors the general human resources environment of the two public operators.

2. Maintaining statutory rights

Although "autonomy" is the key word in the PTT reform, significant elements of social cohesion were kept and can be found particularly in the personnel regulations, which thus forms one of the basic points in the PTT reform that is upheld by the trade unions.

The DGPT has a role as guarantor of collective and individual rights which is guaranteed by the law and by the schedule of terms and conditions to the Ministry for Posts and Telecommunications, and it is this role that underlies the DGPT's responsibility for drawing up various texts on personnel regulations, in cooperation with the Ministries of Civil Service and the Budget.

Active service

It is in this context that the question of active service became a major concern in 1994; the serious reservations of the Conseil d'Etat regarding the possibility, in the newly-created civil service levels, of preserving the years of active service in a personal capacity of employees who had not acquired the fifteen years of service needed for early retirement; this matter risked hindering the process of reclassification, i.e., the change in level proposed to the employee as a function of the post occupied.

The DGPT's proposal to set back the effective date for integration into the new reclassification levels to the date at which the concerned employees will have completed their fifteen years of active service was finally accepted by the Ministerial departments involved. This undertaking, which is important to reforming the PTT, required lengthy preliminary negotiations.

Active service: 190,000 employees concerned

in La Poste and France Télécom

The concept of active service reflects the recognition that certain positions or levels entail a particular risk or bring on exceptional fatigue, as stated in Article L24 of the Code of civil and military retirement pensions.

Employees 55 years and older who are covered by this measure can benefit from early retirement as soon as they have completed at least 15 years of active service, with the right to immediately receive their pension.

About 160,000 La Poste employees (distribution and routing employees, particularly mail deliverers, employees at sorting centres and those working at centralising centres or giro cheque centres) and 30,000 France Télécom employees (basically working on line maintenance) are in such positions.

The joint administrative committees

At first, the P&T reform led to drawing up personnel regulations for the employees of La Poste and France Télécom and then creating the corresponding administrative bodies for each operator.

Given the individual features of the two operators and, in particular, the fact that the chairmen remain responsible for the administrative management of the employees, these operations had to be supplemented by a group of texts concerning the joint administrative committees and the joint technical committees, without, however, neglecting the basic framework set out by civil service law or the need to harmonise the differing wishes of the two companies.

Managing the civil service employees at the P&T Office in French Polynesia

The experience acquired while drawing up the different texts pertaining to the management of the personnel at La Poste and France Télécom made it possible to implement an identical reform for the civil service employees working for the government of French Polynesia as part of Polynesia's Office of Posts and Telecommunications.

Managing the personnel of certain interministerial bodies

The DGPT is responsible for statutory questions involving civil service employees whose status gives them a job position simultaneously at La Poste, France Télécom and the Ministry (Inspectors-General and P&T Administrators), or even in several Ministerial departments (telecommunications engineers).

Advisory councils were set up in order to ensure the harmonious management of these bodies. The role of these councils, which are under the chairmanship of the Minister, is to formulate proposals on human resource management policies, particularly as concerns personnel regulations, recruitment, training, career advancement and mobility, and professional ethics. They are also involved in implementing the policies, as they are also regular members of the joint administrative committees of the body concerned.

Working in close, ongoing coordination with the different employers and the advisory councils on the management of the concerned body, the DGPT is involved in recruitment, promotions in level, and administrative status (on leave, unclassified, available, retirement, transfer, etc.). More than 600 decisions were taken in 1994, counting only those related to administrative status.

On 31 December 1994, the total number of personnel from these three bodies came to 51 inspectors-general, 565 administrators and 1,089 engineers.