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Photo credit: Charly Triballeau/AFP
Patricia Rodriguez has been working since October 21, 2019 at the laundry of the Bordeaux University Hospital, as a qualified contractual maintenance agent. This rank, the lowest in the salaries of the hospital public service, often allows you to work in the logistics services. Although she had been promised a permanent contract, and the laundromat is currently undergoing professional training in order to obtain a diploma in industrial textile maintenance, the laundry manager decided not to renew her contract. She is accused of lacking diligence in her training, even though her professional assessment is irreproachable.
The possibility for contract agents to switch to permanent contracts is a novelty. Previously, this type of contract was offered after one year of service to agents on fixed-term contracts, but excluded non-tenured ones. After pressure exerted by the CGT Laundry on the director of human resources on several occasions, the union finally obtained the transition to permanent contracts for the latter on March 1, 2022 for all agents with more than one year of seniority. Patricia therefore had to sign her contract.
But during her training, the agent is confronted with what she considers a form of harassment. As Patricia mentions for Révolution Permanente: “I pass the CAP this year, but I am belittled several times by the trainers”. Management does not keep it for “lack of attendance” and concentration in CAP courses. The detailed report made by the manager, and submitted by HR during an interview, mentions this and indicates that on July 31, his contract will not be renewed.
However, the work that Patricia does as a laundress is not reproached to her, quite the contrary. His last evaluation is part of a satisfactory level agent, and suggests a passage in CDI. In reality, the management of the Bordeaux University Hospital uses these employees with precarious status as an adjustment variable, while the various departments of the Hospital are subject to staff reductions and must always do more with less resources.
An appeal was made to the HRD of the Bordeaux Hospital, which sided with the management of the laundry, despite all the information provided by the union representatives who accompanied their colleague.
The situation suffered by Patricia is not an isolated case and must be denounced, because we know that the hospital is sorely understaffed: a situation highlighted by the health crisis. If the care services experience many dysfunctions, the precariousness of the agents is also daily in the trades of logistics and maintenance, like the laundromats, the agents of hospital service, in charge of the household, or even the cooks. The resignations, contractual ruptures or layoffs taken by the laundries have multiplied over the past year. The staff is sorely lacking, and has been for years.
These mechanisms of precariousness of the agents of the hospital function, particularly glaring at the lowest of the scale, are an integral part of the logic of the breakage of the public Hospital. Support for Patricia! We must demand his immediate tenure, as well as that of all the precarious contract workers essential to the proper functioning of the hospital and the care chain. But this can only be achieved by one means, the self-organization of workers in all these sectors against the management, but also against this government which continues to make our lives precarious.
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