Chambermaid and trade unionist Rachel Kéké, a figure in the struggle of the Ibis Batignolles strikers, won the second round of the legislative elections on Sunday with 50.3% of the vote against the candidate Ensemble!, the former minister for Sports, Roxana Maracineanu.
Chambermaid and trade unionist Rachel Kéké, a figure in the struggle of the Ibis Batignolles strikers, won the second round of the legislative elections on Sunday with 50.3% of the vote against the candidate Ensemble!, the former minister for Sports, Roxana Maracineanu. Invested by Nupes, Rachel Kéké, a CGT activist, becomes the first chambermaid to become a deputy in France. “I think of all those who are poorly paid who denounce the system. With Nupes, we promised to increase the Smic to 1500 euros. People are suffering a lot,” she said.
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Portrait of Rachel Keke
She defines herself as a “warrior” and wants to “make noise” at the Palais Bourbon: spokesperson for the long strike of the chambermaids of the Ibis Batignolles, Rachel Kéké was elected deputy on Sunday and intends to carry the voice of the workers “invisible” to the Assembly.
Aged 47, the Franco-Ivorian won for Nupes in the 7th constituency of Val-de-Marne against the former Minister of Sports Roxana Maracineanu.
This CGT activist became known during the 22-month strike of chambermaids at the Ibis Batignolles hotel in Paris, between 2019 and 2021, when she mobilized to improve wages and working conditions for women. of housekeeping in the face of the “contempt” of the management.
“It’s a job that destroys the body. There are carpal tunnel syndromes, tendonitis, back pain …”, she explained to AFP during the campaign, still remembering this feeling, “as if (he) had been kicked everywhere”, after his first day as a cleaning lady, in 2003.
Mother of five children, Rachel Kéké was born in 1974 in the town of Abobo, north of Abidjan, to a mother who sold clothes and a father who was a bus driver.
She arrived in France in 2000 and was naturalized in 2015.