There is a lack of manpower in the catering industry, ski resorts cannot find seasonal workers and signs “we are recruiting” are displayed on storefronts. What if this is a sign that the relationship of young people to work has changed? In any case, this is shown by the experience of the Collective Work Less (CTM), in Nantes. For the past four years, its members have been organizing “work” aperitifs. They are at least ten to meet around a few beers to try to answer this question: “How and why work less?”
CMT co-founder Matthieu Fleurance introduces himself as follows: “I am 30 years old. I was a guidance counselor and I retired two and a half years ago. It allows me to do what I want with my time, not to suffer the world of work and that is incredible. ” Yes, you read that correctly, this Nantais retired at 30 years old. And yet, he is not rentier. Matthieu Fleurance even comes from a rather popular background. Bac +5 in his pocket, he begins to work but he does not find any meaning in what he does. So he decides to stop.
Not everyone in this collective is so extreme. “Unworking” does not mean not working but thinking about the place of work in your life, as Miriam does. This 29-year-old young woman has very specific requirements regarding her pace of life: “There, for example, I have a job offer. In addition, they came to look for me, they were interested in my profile, so it’s nice. I allowed myself to explain that I rather wanted to strive for 80% and they said ‘it won’t be possible’. I thought about it and said ‘I like everything but it’s 80% or nothing’ “. A job offer that Miriam therefore refused even though the position suited her.
How to explain that these young people refuse what so many others struggle to obtain? “To work less is to live better”, affirm all the young people convinced by the “detachment” which we questioned. Romane, 24, has just opened her podiatrist practice in Ploemeur (Morbihan), in Brittany. She decided she would start late in the morning and give herself free afternoons in the week. “to keep a quality of personal life”.
“That is to say to be able to play sports, to be able to prepare myself to eat quietly in the evening without being in speed, to be able to free myself of time for my friends, for my family. -being had to accept more patients’ “.
What Romane also says, like many other young “non-workers”, is that she does not want to reproduce the model of the older generations: “My parents always worked hard six days a week. Sometimes they even felt a little guilty about not necessarily being there for our education.”
I said to myself ‘I still want to be able to enjoy and have a quality of life on the side, even if it means earning less.’ “
Romane, 24 years old, podiatristto franceinfo
But deciding to work less, obviously not everyone can afford it. It is a privilege and Matthieu, Miriam or Romane are aware of it. These “workers” are all graduates, they can choose to work more if necessary. Most of the “working people” we have encountered do not have children. And when it comes to their finances, they’re doing well because they’re reducing their needs. They are in a logic of decrease.
Protecting the environment is one of the main motivations of these “detractors”, explains Matthieu Fleurance, the 30-year-old retiree: “We realize that in fact work and ecology are very closely linked, that our situation, which is rather catastrophic from an ecological point of view, is very much linked to our human overactivity.”
“We need to calm down and take the time to learn to live differently. If we don’t take the time, we’re dead.”
Matthieu Fleuranceto franceinfo
How does the world of work react to this questioning of the concept of productivity? Is this tendency to work less to live better also observed by recruiters?
For Benoît Serre, vice-president of the National Association of HRDs, there is no doubt that working time management has become a basic requirement among young employees. With a question that comes up very often during job interviews: “Do you have enough confidence in me to let me organize myself, to produce what you want me to produce without degrading my personal life balance? This is extremely new.”
“I think above all that it is a generation which is no longer at all ready to sacrifice its quality of life, its living conditions, its freedom of life in a way.”
Benoît Serre (National Association of HRDs)to franceinfo
According to this specialist, the Covid-19 has accelerated what was a fundamental trend. When a company offers a position, he explains, it must be able to respond very concretely to all these questions of organization of working time and also prove that the job has meaning, that it does not provide than a salary.