Overtime in the Public Service

At the request of the Finance Committee of the National Assembly, the Court of Auditors investigated overtime in the civil service. The counting of these hours and their compensation arrangements are very heterogeneous, reflecting the diversity of tasks of public service workers and operational constraints. For 2018, however, the Court estimates the amount of overtime stored at EUR 2.3 billion in the three civil service sectors and at more than EUR 50 million hours at a potential cost of more than EUR 1 billion. A factor of flexibility, allowing the public service to be adapted to short-term developments and representing a sometimes significant supplement to salaries for the staff concerned, the use of overtime is also symptomatic of problems of organisation or attractiveness and entailing both human, financial, organisational and operational risks, which are increased by failing monitoring and steering.