Sarkozy urges shake-up of French civil service

By Emmanuel Jarry

NANTES, France (Reuters) - President Nicolas Sarkozy called for a shake-up of France's sprawling civil service on Wednesday by cutting the numbers of employees and raising the pay of those kept on.

He vowed to reduce the number of places at ENA, the exclusive training school for French state functionaries, and said civil servants should be allowed to choose their job contracts and be better paid for overtime.

"What I am proposing is a cultural revolution, a revolution for changing the way we think, for changing behaviour," Sarkozy said in a speech to civil servants in Nantes, western France.

The government has floated proposals to cut France's 5 million-strong public sector workforce as part of a plan to reduce the budget deficit next year.

Trade unions, which count many public sector workers among their members, have expressed concern.

"There is a lot of unhappiness. It goes against everything we could hope for the civil service," said Gerard Aschieri, the head of FSU union for civil servants. "It will be necessary to debate the question of strikes."

Unions are already unhappy about Sarkozy's plan, outlined on Tuesday, to scale back pensions for some public sector workers. Five unions have called for rail workers to strike on October 17 to protest against the pension plans.

Sarkozy confirmed that next year one in three retiring public sector workers would not be replaced and that this number could go up in the future.