Contenu du sommaire : Changer la fonction publique

The official status of civil servants as a socio-historical issue. Civil service employment and its official legal status in France stem from historical developments in which the interrelationship between different actors has constantly alternated between applying a specific body of law to civil servants and bringing them into line with employees in the private sector. Economic change requires a new approach, but this does not necessarily mean that the official status has to be reformed. Reform traditionally depends on the outcome of struggles between the political class and the civil service on the one hand, and the various occupational groups comprising the civil service on the other hand. There are two central issues in this debate, which are as old as the French Republic itself : the first is to know who should represent the continuity of the state, and the second is to determine how senior civil servants can be distinguished from the great majority of other civil service employees.

Employment in civil service human resources management. In recent years, the civil service has made an unprecedented effort to develop a system of human resources management that is free from the burden of corps and grades and focuses on jobs, competences and performance, but still respects the most important principles of the civil service. Unfortunately the results may not be as good as hoped for, as there has been no overhaul of the statutory framework. This would have ensured a better balance between grades and positions held and led to the introduction of new management rules governing contracts, for example, which are a vital tool for individual management. This situation is also due to the lack of greater, gradual alignment with standard labour law.

What impact will the European Union have on the future development of the French civil service model ? The influence of European integration on the French civil service model is not just linked to the principle of free movement of workers. It is also due to the dissemination of modern public management principles across civil services in all member states. The principle of free movement has certainly contributed to reforms on the organisation of the civil service into corps, and it has above all called the French system of administrative schools into question. In spite of these inevitable reforms, it would be going too far to conclude that the French statutory model is condemned : modernisation of public management should not be confused with privatisation of the civil service.

The dangers of diversity in France's territorial civil service. The general reform of public policies is obliging the state to ensure better control of all its expenditure, especially that on administrative staff, thus it is very tempting to introduce greater flexibility into the official status of civil servants. Rightly or wrongly, this is discredited for being too strict and rigid. Bearing this in mind, might the status of territorial civil servants (i.e., those working at local and regional level) offer a good example, with its more flexible system of employment grades in comparison to the corps, and the higher number of contract staff, which ensures a better mixture of skills ? On one hand this may be so, but the drawback is that different regions can interpret the basic system differently, and this may undermine the standard nature of the status and effectively lead to the privatisation of local government employment. It will no doubt be necessary to invent a new model, halfway between the strict status of the state civil service and the flexibility of the status of the territorial civil service. One immediate way to achieve greater clarity in the system would be to go back to having a single management structure for senior state and territorial executives.

Health, the social contract and the market : reforming the public hospital service. This article firstly analyses the impact of competition between public and private healthcare establishments, which is regulated at state level through the pricing of services, on the hospital labour market. Public hospitals are having to adopt human resources management systems that are designed to overcome problems in this market. Secondly, the author notes that privatisation of a public hospital would not necessarily ensure simpler organisation and that the principle of free and equal access of all citizens to care exists independently of the above-mentioned competition. However, the conflict between having a generous system and cost-efficiency makes it necessary to think about how to reorganise the public health sector. Thirdly, the author suggests how efforts can be made to improve the performance of public hospital staff. Particular attention is given to the organisation of hospitals into centres of specialised services and the redefinition of the relationship between different actors, and measures for increasing motivation and the management of vocational qualifications.

Civil service trade unions and management reforms since 2002. This article provides an overview of the positions set out in the newspapers of the French trade unions Force Ouvrière, CGT and CFDT on the main management reforms since 2002, concerning the status of civil servants, the social dialogue, the constitutional bylaw on budget acts and the general reform of public policies. All of these unions essentially come under one of the following three models : resistance without concessions, defence of a civil service that serves citizens or analyses focused on methods that are deemed to be inadequate.

People management in the territorial administration of the state : from tinkering with management to working on the purpose of action. This article examines how local managers of state administrative divisions are adapting their workforce in the context of public administration reform in France. The implementation of public management reforms, such as new budgetary processes and more flexible human resources management procedures, is not enough to foster employees'mobility and improve their effectiveness. Managers must therefore take account of the positive role employees can play in their own development. This survey analyses how management can vary according to type of activity and location. These local managerial innovations demonstrate the limits of comparison between private and public sector reorganisation.

The axiological environment of civil servants. This article has been written in the framework of long-term research on public service motivation. It aims to examine empirically civil servants'values by comparing them to those of employees in the private sector, and in several European countries. The axiological dimension plays a vital role in the perception of reforms and management tools. The article demonstrates that French civil servants differ from their European counterparts in their egalitarianism, their quest for autonomy at work and their refusal to allow social success to be a major criterion for assessment. It can be seen that certain tools which are supposed to affect motivation, such as merit- or performance-based pay, have no effect on the degree of satisfaction at work, including in countries that have undertaken the most extensive public management reforms. There are major variations between teachers and civil servants who are managers. In contrast, the gap with employees in the private sector is fairly narrow.

The similarities and differences between public and private sector employment. While research shows that people from the public and private sectors behave very differently when not at work, data on day-to-day work provided by the survey entitled Changement organisationnel et informatisation (organisational change and computerisation) mainly emphasise the convergence of the public and private sectors. However, there are some differences : in the civil service there is a lower level of control and less direct exposure to the public in comparison to the private sector.

The success of private supply teaching agencies in England : a successful form of external flexibility. This article examines how external flexibility is developing in primary and secondary schools in England. The emergence of private supply teaching agencies in the 1990s called an entire system for managing teaching staff into question. Using the example of supply teaching agencies, the article analyses the labour market for teachers in England and the different ways of using such flexibility in this particular sector. It will also show how these flexible working mechanisms have been introduced as a part of the extensive transformation of public services in England since the mid-1990s. Supply teaching agencies are part of an overall trend towards shared responsibilities and the gradual “withdrawal” of the Weberian state in the provision of public services. This constitutes the empirical reflection of the liberal policies conducted with great enthusiasm by successive Conservative governments and then Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's New Labour.

Civil service reform and the introduction of performance-related pay. The paper examines the process of personnel reform in Italy since the beginning of the 1990s. An interpretation of the extensive changes that have occurred in Italy is proposed, based on the analysis of the dynamics of the relations between elected and tenured officials ( “the public service bargain”). The second part of the paper considers a specific but highly influential type of reform : performance-related pay. Problems and conditions for its effectiveness are examined, and lessons for would-be reformers in other countries are drawn.

The experience of the “survivors” of the neoliberal reforms of civil service in Quebec. The policy of reducing staff numbers in the civil service in Quebec has had a lasting impact on the mental health and attitudes at work of the third of employees who survived the draconian redundancies announced in 1997. In the survey conducted in 1998 and 2000, examples of overworking, exhaustion, lack of satisfaction and feelings of injustice were reported more by trade union members than by managers. Suggestions are made on how to facilitate the adaptation to structural change in public administration and how to make the ongoing negative effects less intense.

Spanish public sector employment : between the “public-isation” of contract workers and privatisation of the status of civil servants. This text analyses the Spanish public employment model on the basis of reforms introduced by legislation on the employment status of public employees in 2007, which for the first time in the democratic era gave civil servants an official status. This legislation introduced a dual structure, with civil servants and staff who have a contract governed by labour law. However, the standard use of contracts governed by social law is taking place in a legal framework which has a common system of principles and rules, notably with regard to access and career progress. The contractual relationship is thus heavily supervised and above all regulated by administrative law. In parallel, the introduction of human resources management tools that are specific to private enterprise – but in a system based on administrative law – and the clear and unequivocal acceptance of the right to be represented and to collective bargaining means that there has been a break with the old system dominated by unilateralism. The privatisation of the civil service's legal system and the “public-isation” of the system governing contracts established under regular labour law for other staff are the two notable characteristics of the new public sector employee model in Spain. This model standardises the basic principles by diversifying the sectoral and territorial applications.