"What the Government Offers Is Just Crumbs": Teachers and Students Keep Up Pressure in Dijon as New Strikes Loom

Around one hundred professors, university students, and high schoolers gathered on Tuesday, November 10, in front of the local education authority headquarters in the French city of Dijon, responding to a call by education unions to protest against budget cuts, job eliminations, low wages, and tough conditions for accessing higher education. Neither the promises made by Sébastien Lecornu nor the Prime Minister's speech the day before during a social conference succeeded in dampening the anger of the protesters, who are preparing to continue their mobilization through escalating actions.

Demands for Higher Wages and Decent Working Conditions

During the march, which moved from outside the education authority's offices toward the city streets, the inter-union coordination—comprising representatives from national education, higher education, and youth—stressed that demands center on injecting real financial resources to rescue the public service. Mathias Zucchini, an elementary school teacher since 2005, described the movement as an extension of a historic mobilization that began on September 29, emphasizing that what the government has offered amounts to nothing more than "crumbs" that fail to meet the bare minimum, while deploring the authorities' refusal to open dialogue with civil servants.

Union demands include ending the freeze on the salary index point and granting substantial unconditional increases, in addition to reclassifying accompanying assistants for students with disabilities (AESH) and educational assistants (AED) into Category B, as well as creating new positions to recruit teachers and senior educational advisors (CPE) to address the existing shortage of teaching and supervisory staff.

Deteriorating Educational Facilities and Calls to Abolish Orientation Platforms

At the secondary and university levels, the protest movement is demanding an adequate budget to guarantee funding for 150,000 additional seats in higher education to allow baccalaureate holders to choose their paths freely, alongside the creation of 15,000 permanent posts. Demands were also renewed to abolish the orientation platforms "Parcoursup" and "Mon Master" to ease university admissions, while allocating an urgent investment plan for the maintenance and renovation of dilapidated institutions, in light of a Senate report revealing that one in ten high schools in France suffers from decay and structural fissures.

Morgane Lebeau, a second-year law student, highlighted signs of neglect within facilities, including broken lighting, a shortage of seating, malfunctioning sound and projection equipment in lecture halls, a lack of effective thermal insulation in winter and summer, overcrowded tutorial rooms, and low pay for adjunct lecturers.

Ongoing Mobilization and Calls for Upcoming Strikes

These actions unfold against the backdrop of social tensions experienced in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region since September, accompanied by some security incidents, including a high school near Toulouse being entered by hooded individuals who set off fireworks and started small fires on November 5. In response to these developments, education unions have filed notices for fresh strikes on November 14 and 17, while demonstrators in Dijon held a general assembly in Place Wilson to establish a roadmap for upcoming mobilizations.