Analysis. On April 13, 2020, when France was experiencing its first confinement, the President of the Republic suddenly shined the spotlight on a category of the population hitherto invisible: those whom he named, in a televised speech, the workers “second line”. “We will also have to remember that our country, today, relies entirely on women and men whom our economies recognize and remunerate so poorly.he says. “Social distinctions can only be based on common utility.” These words, the French wrote them more than two hundred years ago. Today we must take up the torch and give full force to this principle. »
To this end, at the end of 2020, the government will entrust Christine Erhel, director of the center for employment and labor studies at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts (CNAM), and Sophie Moreau-Follenfant, ex-HRD at Derichebourg, now on the board of RTE, a mission “for the revaluation of second-line professions”. They submit their report a year later to the Minister of Labor at the time, Elisabeth Borne. The same who, having become Prime Minister, presented the pension reform on January 10.
What did this report say? id seventeen “businesses of economic and social continuity”, it counted 4.6 million second-line workers in the private sector (home helpers, cleaners, handlers, workers in the construction industry, the food industry, employees in mass distribution, waste, etc.). Their salaries are 30% lower than those of the rest of the workers, their contracts are more precarious, their prospects for development more limited, they are more often part-time. This induces low contributions, therefore low pensions, and late retirements, or at a discount.
“No mission follow-up”
The report also raised the question of “sustainability over time” of these professions which, despite harsh working conditions, are only very little concerned by the hardship prevention account, whose criteria have been defined for industry and not for service professions. No arduousness points for home helpers, garbage collectors or mass distribution employees, unless they work a lot of night hours.
Several measures were suggested: a time savings account to ease the end of the career, negotiations on hardship, earlier retraining, before the wear and tear of the bodies. He also evoked levers to encourage the professional branches to revalue the wages, the State not having on this point not directly the hand.
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