Open letter to Mrs Marie-Pierre Mouton, president of the departmental council of Drôme
Mr Franck Soulignac1st vice president in charge of the economy, employment and integration
Emeline Mehukaj-Mathieudepartmental advisor responsible for employment and integration
but also all of departmental advisors of Drôme.
We, volunteers and supporters of theassociation Interstices, we are contacting you regarding the Zero Long-Term Unemployed Territory project in the Dieulefit-Bourdeaux area. This project is carried out in a very committed manner by the community of municipalities, with in particular Interstices as a partner (association of local citizens brought together to fight against long-term unemployment and the mechanisms of social exclusion that result from it).
The Zero Long-Term Unemployed Territory action today represents 75 territories across France and 84 employment-oriented companies, employing 3,281 people who were permanently deprived of employment. In the neighboring territories of Teil and Livron this corresponds to 156 people removed from lasting joblessness. These are all jobs created, around products and services lacking in the territories (because often insufficiently lucrative for structures of the “classic” economy) and which allow people in great difficulty (because of their health, their age , their family or caregiver situation, etc.) and their families to escape from lasting job deprivation, and from the infernal loop of RSA.
For four years the Interstices association has been mobilizing these people kept away from employment; the latter get involved, share their experiences, remobilize skills.
They break the isolation in which great precariousness maintains. These people will always have great difficulties facing the “classic” job market.
Rather than passive beneficiaries of RSA or unemployment benefits, we, volunteers, wish to once again become actors in our lives, to work again in a sustainable way and to be useful to the community. Some of us may even succeed in returning to traditional jobs, after having had this possibility of reintegration into the world of work via the Employment Purpose Company.
Classic reintegration has shown its limits (no follow-up beyond two years) when it is not absent from the territory as is the case here, and employers do not prioritize hiring people seniorspeople with handicappeople forced to work part-time. Should we therefore leave ourselves inactive and isolated?
No agreement from the Department, no further action possible. Several years of volunteer work, investment for and by the community will be wasted, activities useful to the region will not see the light of day. There would be a moral but also a financial cost if this project were to stop now.
Why refuse to put a text already voted on on the agenda in order to regularize a simple copy-paste error?
If the application does not go to a vote at the beginning of December at the departmental council, 337 people will be left without a solution to the lasting deprivation of employment in a rural area.
Investing in employment and rural areas means supporting the Dieulefit-Bourdeaux Zero Long-Term Unemployed Territory project.
For more dignity and a stable future we ask you to kindly put the vote on this text back on the agenda.
