WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, CNT-AIT: Anarchosyndicalisme #180 - Aging at work: Marie, 66 and Pôle Emploi adviser (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 They are between 58 and 67 years old, still working and bear witness to the

impossibility of working until old age. Marie, 66, is an agent at Pôle Emploi.
She talks about her retirement which is moving away and the service provided to
users which is deteriorating. ---- Khedidja Zerouali ---- Marie is an employment
counselor and strives to support job seekers with sometimes chaotic paths, in
ever more degraded conditions, both for agents and for users. But above all, at
66, after a choppy career, the disabled worker is exhausted. She longs only for
rest but will still have to wait. ---- "My name is Marie, I am 66 years old and I
have been working at Pôle Emploi since 2005. I have 260 job seekers that I have
to take care of on my own. I am tired.
We are put under pressure on the figures and there is the despair of the
unemployed that we have to manage. I see people every two or three months. I am
overwhelmed with emails. I start at 7:30 a.m. and finish at 5 p.m., and I only
take a twenty-minute break. According to my schedule, I work from 8:15 a.m. to
4:30 p.m. But I start earlier than my schedule because otherwise I can't make it,
I want to do my job well.

We are being pressured to make numbers. For example, we are asked to prescribe a
period of work experience every two weeks, it's a bit like internships. Except
that there are few employers who want to do it, because it takes time to train
someone. And yet, we still have to prescribe it because the government thinks
it's good.

Marie, 66 years old and Pole emploi adviser. © Illustration Justine Vernier /
Mediapart

Because of Pôle emploi, our profession is being lost. Since we no longer have the
time to properly support job seekers, our management is increasingly pushing us
to redirect applicants to services provided by the private sector. Discovering
the Pôle emploi site, redoing a CV, writing a cover letter, supporting someone in
a job application... We used to do all of this before because we had the time,
but now we are systematically asked to refer to external services. I have the
impression that I no longer do my job as a professional development advisor
properly. It's sad.

And in addition, private providers do not always do the job well. On writing the
CV, we discussed for a long time with people, if there were periods of
unemployment, we saw how we could fill them, we highlighted their profile... With
private service providers, they have to do it quickly, to several, it's really
not the same service that is delivered.

I'm tired of all this and I'm not the only one, my colleagues are the same.

I have been a nanny, bakery saleswoman, extra in restaurants, receptionist at a
holiday center, home help, tax worker, accountant for the fire department,
cashier at a gas station, adviser at Pôle Emploi.

I started working at 14, including Saturdays and Sundays. I was a nanny, bakery
saleswoman, extra in restaurants when I was in high school.

After I had the baccalaureate and I left for hotel and catering training, thanks
to which I became a receptionist in 1976.

Marie in hospitality and catering training in the 1970s
Then I had my boy. In the early 1980s, I worked at the reception of a holiday
center during the summer seasons which ran from March to October approximately.

Then I had my daughter. I could not continue to work in holiday centers with my
two children to take care of. So I became a home helper for the elderly.

Since my partner was a teacher and I had two children, I could not work during
the day so I worked at night. I spent evenings and nights with the elderly, I
watched that they had no problem, we ate, we sometimes watched a movie together,
sometimes I had to call doctors for emergencies late at night. I did that for
about two years, until the late 1980s.

After home help, I replaced a person on leave in an accounting and management
department for a year. I have done many jobs in my life.

But it was in the early 90s that it got really complicated, I had the onset of
cancer and a lot of medical problems. All the bones in my spine have devitalized.
I was recognized as a disabled worker and I had to stop for a year. Again.

When I wanted to resume, my doctor forbade me a lot of the jobs I had done
before. So I trained in IT in a specialized center for two years, but when I
left, I couldn't find a job. Disaster.

At that time, I took what I found: I did a tax replacement, then I found myself
an accountant for the firefighters, I mainly took care of their pay slips.

That's when my husband and I separated. We lived in official accommodation which
had been granted to him. So I found myself alone, without a stable job, with the
children, and without housing. disaster again

In terms of work, I found a part-time job as a cashier at a gas station, it was
not easy. For housing, I sent letters to get social housing, I did not get it. We
found ourselves in completely shabby accommodation, it was very cold, it was
damp, it was awful. So one day I told my employer that I wouldn't come, I told
the children's school that they wouldn't come and we went, in the morning, to the
HLM office. They wanted to fire me but I stayed, I kept telling them that I
needed decent housing and, with the children, we stayed all day, until we were
given housing. And we got it, they gave us the keys.

And it was after all this journey that, finally, I passed the competitions to
enter Pôle Emploi. I got it in 2005, I've been working on it since but I'm tired.

When I turned 60, I was at Pôle Emploi and asked them if I could leave earlier.
As I have worked for a long time, as I am a disabled worker, I thought I could
leave at 62 at the full rate. but when I asked the Carsat[Caisse d'assurance
retirement et de la santé au travail - ndlr], they told me that it was not possible.

Apparently, I didn't qualify for early retirement. So, at 66, I am still working
and Carsat tells me that I have to wait until I am 67 to have full retirement.»

http://cnt-ait.info/2023/02/14/vieillir-au-travail/
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