The Parisian school childcare workers have been on strike since Monday and until Friday, November 17, to denounce their working conditions. A gathering was organized in front of the Paris City Hall. Statements from the demonstrators.
Lou, 22 years old, has just taken the exam to become an animator in the schools of the city of Paris. She has been an intern since September and works in the 19th arrondissement. “Sometimes,” she says, “we end up with two people supervising about sixty children.”
“Today in my school, I found myself alone with 32 children,” complains Lou. “This is happening every day recently,” she laments. “When temporary workers come to work with us and they see their pay at the end of the month, they don’t come back and I understand them,” insists the young woman.
This Tuesday, at the call of the unions SUPAP-FSU and CFDT, a rally was organized in front of the Paris City Hall. Among the demands of the demonstrators, the precariousness of the animator status and understaffing in schools almost every day. “Many temporary workers occupy positions that are actually real jobs,” explains Nicolas Léger, co-general secretary of the SUPAP-FSU.
“The temporary workers do not have an employment contract; they are paid by the job. The city does not even provide them with a work decision, which is a poor substitute for an employment contract. We have temporary workers who have been in regular positions for years that should have been permanent jobs long ago,” denounces the trade union representative.
Shahinez and her friend Samantha are at the Paris City Hall. They are both temporary animators in a school in the 19th arrondissement. “I am here today because I feel that our work is not valued enough,” explains Shahinez. “When you are temporary, it is often very difficult; you never know if you will work each day, it’s a bit like temporary work,” she recognizes.
For Samantha, it is a job of passion. “We are proud to do this job and when there is a lack of recognition, it can be very frustrating,” insists Samantha. She would like to continue in this job and manage to make a decent living from it. For now, she lives with her parents and explains that she can still afford to have precarious contracts.
The same goes for Lou. “I was a temporary worker for several months and when I found myself alone in certain schools with 50 children. Well, I didn’t come back. It was too hard,” she testifies. “It can pose safety problems, especially when working with very young children,” emphasizes Lou.
Lou doesn’t want to work with a heavy heart. “If a child gets hurt, we are responsible. We are suffering at work, and we don’t have colleagues to help us.” “Today, a parent thanked me for going on strike,” she says. “Go on strike because it is super important, for you, but also for our children,” he told me.
Fatiha, a permanent employee for 20 years, talks about an increasingly deteriorating daily life. “Since the 2013 reform, things have changed a lot; employees are increasingly having a hard time being appointed permanently and many people remain as temporary workers for too long. And that’s not right,” she says.
The City of Paris must make proposals on personnel, de-precarization of temporary workers, salaries, and the level of bonuses, says Nicolas Léger, present at the gathering. “On remuneration, there are two levers,” explains the union leader, who demands the allocation of several bonuses to cope with the inflation and the deterioration of the purchasing power of his colleagues. But also that the city of Paris opens negotiations for statutory evolutions of the animators.
The elected officials in charge of the matter, Olivia Polski and Patrick Bloche, are considering receiving a delegation on Monday. “It doesn’t suit us at all,” says Nicolas Léger. “There is a general assembly of personnel on Thursday at the Labor Exchange. Colleagues will have to take a position based on the negotiations with the City. We will not stop the strike on Thursday afternoon. We are not expecting to be announced positive things on Monday,” he despairs.
The Change Paris group and the Communist and Citizen group have each submitted wishes on the theme of the peri-school period to the Paris Council which should be discussed on Thursday. Today, the Communist citizen group sent a letter to Anne Hidalgo, asking to meet with the representatives of the animators as part of this week’s mobilization.
