French teachers protest stagnant wages amid decades of pay erosion

Delphine, 55, has worked for more than twenty-three years in France's public education, initially on temporary contracts before securing a permanent position at a vocational high school in 2014. Despite holding a senior civil-service rank and a postgraduate degree, her net monthly earnings are low enough that she has stored her car and foregoes holidays. As a single parent living in social housing, she cannot risk missing a day's wage, so she will teach on the day of the public-sector strike, while endorsing the inter-union call for salary hikes.

The protest targets the government's 2027 budget proposal, which would maintain a pay-index freeze for the fourth year in a row. This issue resonates strongly among teachers, who have experienced a long-term decline in real wages since the 1980s, with no effective policy remedy to date.