The Federation of Cleanliness and Hygiene Companies (FEP) has been calling on the subject for several months now. At a time when the government is expressing its desire to put the question of wages back on the table to relaunch the post-pension reform discussion, its leaders seized the opportunity of the opening of the Europropre trade fair in Paris on Tuesday April 4, to reaffirm that “the public buyer was not up to the commitments” taken a year and a half ago.
In September 2021, the sector’s social partners and representatives of customers, public and private purchasers, met in the framework of a “progress conference”, under the high sponsorship of the government and the Minister of Labor of then, Elisabeth Borne. In the post-Covid-19 context, it was a question of finding how to revalue these trades whose workers had appeared to be essential during the confinements.
The opportunity to denounce “low cost” purchasing practices to the detriment of the remuneration and working conditions of employees. The employers had undertaken to revalue the wages, the buyers, the amount of the markets.
Two weights, two measures
“I am extremely disappointed with the lack of follow-up to this progress conference. While we have increased salaries, the amount of public cleaning contracts has continued to decrease with, moreover, more and more constraints on the specifications,” deplores Philippe Jouanny, president of the FEP.
The latest negotiations recorded a 5.5% increase in two stages for 2023, i.e. a total of 11% in two years, while with inflation, the costs of products and materials have increased by 16%. In a sector where margins are low, around 3% on average, according to Mr. Jouanny, “the equation is difficult to maintain”.
He denounces a double standard when a year ago, the Prime Minister had called for the implementation of legal levers to take into account the surge in energy prices in the execution of public contracts. But nothing for the rising cost of labor.
At Matignon, it is specified that Elisabeth Borne has personally never made a commitment. “We must appeal to the responsibility and vigilance of contractors, public or private, to reduce the continuous pressure on prices”, she said at the time. And that it signed, in March 2022, a circular recommending that buyers of State services “favor the quality of service for the awarding of contracts”, not the price.
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