In an interview with RTL on Tuesday morning, CGFP president Romain Wolff lamented PM Bettel's lack of willingness to engage in a constructive dialogue with the union, despite being offered multiple opportunities to do so: "We understand that we are in the midst of a pandemic, but the Prime Minister could not even spare five or ten minutes for us."
While the health crisis keeps being used as an excuse to prioritise other matters, the coalition was still able to secretly launch three draft bills concerned with public service. The statement claims that those were designed to "weaken the sector despite its relevance for the system". The press release thus announces that CGFP will no longer accept these circumstances and that they have initiated conciliatory proceedings.
The most recent controversies were caused by attempts to privatise key positions in the government, most notably in the ministries of sport and education, as well as in the general administration.
PM Bettel was supposed to meet with the Union by Christmas, but pushed the conference back to mid January. Since CGFP has still not received a final proposition for a meeting, they decided to launch the arbitration process, president Wolf confirmed on Tuesday: "We don't like doing this during a pandemic, but at this stage, it seems to be the only way. Enough is enough!"
