Five thousand positions are to be filled in establishments and services in the social, medico-social and private non-profit health sectors in Overseas France, alert Nexem, the main organization of associative employers in these sectors, this Monday. “There are in particular 250 to 300 vacant positions in Guadeloupe, 200 in Guyana, and a hundred in Martinique”, explains Alain Raoul, the president of Nexem, who begins a ten-day visit to these territories on Tuesday to meet his members.
If metropolitan France is not spared, with 50,000 vacancies_, “many more people are affected proportionally in the overseas territories, where the effects of the crisis are aggravated”._
Salary, sinews of war
As a result of this staff shortage, “Establishments are reducing their reception capacity, and employees are subject to very heavy workloads which expose them to a risk of burnout”, continues Mr. Raoul, who believes that the issue of wages is the “main reason” from lack of attractiveness of professions in the sector. “The average salary of employees in our sector is 25% lower than the average French salary”, he indicates.
Among these employees, who work in particular with disabled people, children or the elderly, “many feel they are not being recognized at their fair value”. Nexem requests in particular the payment of the “Ségur bonus” of 183 euros net monthly – announced in February for professionals in the socio-educational sector – to staff in the general and administrative service sectors who have not benefited from it.
In September, the Minister for Solidarity, Inclusion and Handicap, Jean-Christophe Combe, had also announced that all employees of the private non-profit sector would benefit from “the equivalent of the increase in point value for the civil service”in response to a demand from professional organizations