Agents under Contract in the Territorial Civil Service: Can a Precarious Legal Status Become a Managerial Asset?

Abstract

The authors try to find the reasons underlying the following paradox: on one hand, by passing a series of measures, public authorities attempt to reduce the number of non-tenured agents, mainly because of their insecure legal status. They describe the precariousness of agents under contract in the territorial civil service, both in terms of their recruitment and career, and of their status, which is vague and incomplete. On the other hand however, the state employer does nothing to modify existing rules and regulations that allow for increased use of these agents, and thus does not seem to wish to relinquish the controlled use of labor that serves the purpose of being an adjustment variable. On the basis of a study of human resource management in a medium-sized commune, the authors show that the selfish interests which, due to their status, dominate the individual strategies of employees on short-term contracts, can serve the collective interest of greater efficiency in the human resource management of territorial staff. From the point of view of public managers, despite its present imperfections, the legal regime of agents under contract in fact allows for a flexibility of management advantageous to administrative reform, in the sense that agents are given more responsibility, competencies are more easily and quickly detected, and salaries better managed. From the agents’ point of view, those on an administrative level at least, a certain number of advantages to some extent make up for the precariousness of their status, in particular the negotiation of their salary in terms of their competencies.

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