In great pain, home helpers deplore “too much emotional burden and too low salaries”

It rang out at the Regourd roundabout! Will the SOS of the employees of the Lot Aide à Domicile structure, who came together this Saturday, be heard by the Barnier government at a time when drastic cuts are planned in this area as well. Weakened “morally and physically”, they say, the home helpers remain combative.

They rely on the strength of their collective so that their speech carries far, loud and clear in order to overturn notorious injustices that they denounce without tongue in cheek.

Pascale Fontaine, Roselyne Vidaillac and Danielle Prévautel, respectively representing CFDT, FO and CGT, demand with one voice “real recognition of our profession and the reality of it. Salaries are too low.”

All the distress of home helpers in the hands of Sandra

Today's mobilization consisted of raising awareness among motorists, around this busy route, of the difficulties of the home help profession. Difficulties perfectly summarized here by Sandra, a non-unionized home helper, who uses her freedom of speech to support her colleagues, new and old.

“Our amplitude sometimes even exceeds 10 hours to reach 12. This prevents us from having a family life. We finish cleaning at 6 p.m., for example, then wait an hour in the car before preparing a meal elsewhere. Time constraints force us to have these downtimes. We have to show empathy. For example, I can't imagine going to feed someone at 6:15 p.m. We end up very emotionally and physically tired. my hands!” she says, pointing to some red spots. Eczema.

“A high rate of absenteeism”

Roselyne Vidaillac takes the floor again and insists on the need to “create a single and homogeneous collective agreement for all home help structures. There are still too many differences with the ADMR (Home help in rural areas). We should all be paid on the same basis. However, this is not the case. We work hours of more than 10 hours per day. We work far too many kilometers. revalued. Whether you are from LAD or ADMR, the arduousness is the same, but not the remuneration. This arduousness generates a high rate of absenteeism.

Serving 3,000 people daily in the Lot

Roselyne Vidaillac is relatively worried and bangs her fist on the table, making the bitter observation of “the difficulties that structures like ours are experiencing. Budgets have been cut. Our salaries have not been increased despite inflation We help 3,000 people in the Lot. Our profession is very important in this department, which has the second oldest population in France,” she recalls without being mistaken.

More and more accidents at work

For her part, Pascale Fontaine points out some very regrettable facts: “You should know that this is the profession where there are the most work accidents. And this is increasing. The first of these concerns handling help people. We also suffer from it. We lift weights, bodies that we have to take great care of, sometimes it’s falls and injuries,” she adds.

“The government forgets to take into account the hardship”

“We work with people at the end of their lives. We have to manage their great weakness as well as the bad mood of the caregivers. However, we are not here to put the caregivers on trial” continues the CFDT representative.

Danielle Prévautel cannot do better, in turn, than to defend her profession, once again on the theme of arduousness.”We are told about old age, but we are not taken into account by the government which forgets all the hardship.”

Sandra's hands demonstrate this difficulty, at all levels. They are red, like his eyes sometimes. His eczema reflects his emotion, the absence of leisure and a private life which would allow him to clear his mind by drowning, in a little pleasure, all the arduousness of a profession which leaves traces in the body and the mind.