To remobilize caregivers after months of Covid crisis, Olivier Véran had promised a financial gesture. “We’re going to double the overtime rate. It is hoped that this measure of human resources will be an additional motivation to seek the necessary surplus energy,” he said at the microphone of France Inter on December 18. But in Marseille, 400 caregivers are asked to return these bonuses after having touched them.
They are operating room nurses and testify with their faces hidden because they are subject to the duty of reserve. In April, they learned by email that they had received an “overpayment”. One must reimburse 2200 euros, another 900, another still 2400 euros. “It’s the panic ! When we open a mail with such sums, we wonder how we will be able to reimburse them, how we will keep the budget the following month.”
At issue: overtime worked during night or weekend on-call duty. They were paid double, as announced by the Minister of Health… but will now be withdrawn. “We are angry, because we say to ourselves: ‘finally the State has recognized the hardship of our work’, and finally it is not recognized for everyone and it is taken away from us,” exasperated a nurse. “It’s pure betrayal, and it’s a total disregard for the paramedics who keep the operating theaters running 24 hours a day.,” adds one of his colleagues.
According to the management of the Hospitals of Marseille, these agents would never have been eligible for the doubling of overtime during their on-call periods. The sums paid must therefore be returned. “We understand very well how painful it is to have a pay that turns out to be erroneous and that must be reimbursed, for a Human Resources Department it is a disaster to have a pay that is not reliable. ,“regrets the HRD.
“What happened here was a computer bug and confusion with the overtime premium, which did not apply to on-call duty.”
Elisabeth Coulomb, Director of Human Resources at the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Marseille (AP-HM)at the eye of 8 p.m.
Yet other hospitals claim the opposite. Like the Grenoble University Hospital, which confirms to us that it has paid its staff these bonuses, which the hospitals of Marseille say, they have paid by mistake. A double standard which goes badly for the CGT: “we are all civil servants, there should be no distinction between the AP-HM, the Aix Hospital Center and the Grenoble University Hospital… and that’s what is happening at the moment.”
Asked about these disparities between establishments in the overtime payment policy, the Ministry of Health did not answer us. In Marseille, some nurses have already seen their April pay amputated by several hundred euros.
Decree of March 16, 2021 on the increase in overtime for caregivers
Public Assistance-Hospitals of Marseille
Non-exhaustive list.