IIt is complicated to make only winners with a reform seeking to save 12 billion euros per year. In fact, the analysis of the effects of the pension reform shows more and more that it would above all generate losers, among whom women workers or employees would be the hardest hit. These, which appeared to be essential during the pandemic, remain poorly paid and do not see their working conditions improve.
The case of home help is emblematic in this respect. There is no doubt about the need and the usefulness of taking care of people with loss of autonomy: allowing them to stay at home despite their reduced abilities has in particular beneficial effects on the hospital system, the people benefiting from this aid are less often referred to the hospital by the SAMU and are less often hospitalized by the emergency services.
However, this collective utility has a cost, which is borne by these employees. Their working conditions are arduous, exposing them to household cleaning chemicals and traumatic postures, carrying patients from bed to chair, helping them walk or grooming. Remuneration remains very low, not only because the hourly wage is low, but also because the paid working time is much less than the time devoted to work, because it is fragmented between the different people helped and interspersed with many working hours. transport between their homes: according to data from the Department of Studies of the Ministry of Labor, the average number of hours of employees in human service organizations in 2021 was 16 hours per week.
The blur of arduousness
For home helpers, the pension reform is another violent blow to their living conditions. The tasks performed do not allow these women to last until they are 64 years old. We would therefore impose on them a passage through unemployment, or even through the RSA, between the moment when, worn out by this job so useful to the community, they will stop exercising it, and the moment when they could finally claim retirement. And how long will they benefit from it? While life expectancy has increased, inequalities remain very high, and to the disadvantage of home help: INSEE estimates the difference in life expectancy at eight years and four months between the wealthiest fifth of women and the poorest fifth. Moreover, the direction of the studies of the ministry for health shows that the variation is also very strong in the proportion of the people strongly limited by disability from the first year of retirement.
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