We have been talking for several months about the “big resignation”, and more recently about job abandonment. If there is one sector that has been hit hard by these two phenomena, it is cleaning companies.
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Companies that clean offices, and all companies, public and private, in general, are those that know the most about the phenomenon of the “great resignation”. The federation of cleaning companies has just released a “blue book” in which it raises several problems it encounters.
Starting with recruitment. In this sector, which employs 560,000 people, we are looking for a tenth of the workforce. Cleanliness companies lack 53,000 CDIs. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of fixed-term contracts that defaulted this summer. A situation which leads certain companies to refuse contracts, confides to franceinfo the president of the federation of cleaning companies, Philippe Jouanny.
This situation started three or four years ago. Before the Covid crisis, the profession was already experiencing recruitment difficulties. But since the health crisis, things have accelerated. Philippe Jouanny reports resignations and job abandonments in quantities he has never known. The president of the Federation of cleaning companies notes, for example, that these departures were linked to the increase in fuel prices. When they increased, many employees felt that it was no longer profitable to go to work, especially since their days, cut in half, required them to go back and forth twice a day.
These resignations affect all levels of the company, even in management. More worryingly, the profession can no longer attract young people. For the first year, 500 young people were missing from the training centers for apprentices in the profession. This lack of attractiveness of these trades is of course explained by the salaries, even if they were revalued by 6% this year and a boost was given to the transport bonus. But what blocks above all are the working conditions.
Despite pressure from the federation, client companies still demand that cleaning be done outside office hours. This forces employees to come to work early in the morning and late in the evening, with a day cut in half and twice as much transport time. In particular, the federation puts pressure on public purchasers to set an example. But his demands remain a dead letter.