Here is a job “unexecutable” after 50 years
From the outside, the municipal crèche in Herstal is undoubtedly the worst place in the world to work. A huge bunker from the 70s, looks like a Soviet cartoon. Fortunately, inside it is softness that prevails and it is a performance given the mastodon. The crèche is the largest public crèche in Wallonia with 154 children and 70 workers who depend on the Commune. We are therefore in a public service.
Everything intrigues me here, starting with the director. While part of the staff has been on strike since Monday and has had to turn away dozens of children (not all of them), Élodie Delaval accepts my visit. I don’t understand, you don’t look upset? “You know it’s a famous load to be a childcare worker, you have to receive and absorb a lot, from parents as well as children, the difficulty is real”.
Each report has its sensations, but this time I feel a strange “sweet – salty”. The crèche is ugly on the outside but beautiful on the inside, the staff is on strike but the management understands, it’s a public service but we’re not crying about underfunding. For example, the ONE asks for one childcare worker per group of 7 children, but here the Commune finances additional childcare workers. In Herstal, the public service is obviously good, so why the strike?
Élodie introduces me to Marianne. She is the perfect embodiment of the silent ordeal of the “babysitters”. “I was a childcare worker but now I supervise colleagues. Thanks to the municipality, which created a teaching post, I somehow benefited from a career development, which no childcare worker knows. It’s psychologically hard but also physically when you have to play on the ground and crouch all the time”.
Let’s remake the world for two seconds. If we had to set an age limit for this profession? “I would say 50 or 55,” Marianne told me. “60 years in any case is too late. You know, we are often told that you have to love children to do this job. This is not enough “.
Élodie, the director takes me to an empty section of the nursery for the traditional Saturday selfie. Say, how much does a childcare worker earn? “Some end their career with around 2,300 euros net. It’s not huge”. Effectively.
The not very private house of Theo Francken
Wednesday evening, last minute interview, Theo Francken can receive us in Lubbeek near Louvain. I’m in the middle of filming in the center of La Louvière, I abandon my interlocutor at high speed to rush to the other side of the country.
Along the way, the N-VA leader’s press officer sends me a message not to film Theo Francken’s house. Logic, discretion, that’s privacy.
Total irony, the nationalist’s house can be seen for miles. Not because it’s bling-bling but because a huge mat is in front. Floating in the wind, the Flemish flag leaves no doubt about the inhabitant of the house. In the discreet genre, there is no better.
Theo Francken is waiting for us in his office on the side of the street. For the interview, I ask him if we can sit on his wooden table which seems “old”. I tell him that I weigh more than 100kg, he replies that he does too, but in real life it doesn’t seem like it.
As I sat down on the corner, I felt a slight creak. A French speaker who breaks the table of an N-VA… That would have made a good headline in Sudinfo.