Parquet floors, large bay windows, light pine tables, wicker armchairs, comfortable colored velvet sofas… The place looks like one of those trendy coworking spaces. Except that here, we do not share the workplace, but the rest time: Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine) has set up these 300 square meters for employees who work in the city in “discontinuous hours”, with large periods of free, unpaid time between two shifts.
During the visit to the World, around ten people mingle there in a warm atmosphere. Women, mostly home helpers, who have finished their morning rounds and have two or three hours to wait before the evening one. Moureen (the speakers did not give their last name), 37, takes off her shoes before lying down for a nap – there are several deck chairs for that. In the brand new kitchen, Mimi reheats the leftover rice and chicken from her dinner the day before : “It allows me to save the price of a sandwich or a takeaway. » Seated at a table, Marceline (first name has been changed), 63 years old, leafs through The New Detective And Paris here. Colette, 56, is in a long telephone conversation, connected to Wi-Fi.
They work for one or more employers with around ten dependent elderly people whom they must lift, wash, feed, take for walks or do their shopping, and, in the evening, make dinner and ” put in bed “. Interventions that require availability at both ends of the day.
“It takes you all day”
Their schedules demonstrate an enormous range of hours: they sometimes start at 7 or 8 a.m. and finish after 7 or 8 p.m. With, in the middle, a more or less long cut. “Some days I work until 2 p.m., but I don’t have anything until 6 p.m.”says one of them. “Me, this morning, I had one hour, from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., then I start again from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., explains another. Sometimes you get three hours of paid work, but it takes you all day! »
According to figures from the statistics and research department of the Ministry of Labor, noted in the book Home help, a suffering profession (François-Xavier Devetter, Annie Dussuet and Emmanuelle Puissant, Ed. de l’Atelier, 2023), “when we compare the time counted as actual work to the length of their working day, we see that it represents less than 57%, compared to 84% for all employees. In other words, a home helper’s day is only paid for two thirds of its duration..
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