93% of public contracts do not offer day schedules “, regrets the sector federation

Only 7% of public procurement includes day cleaning hours, between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., deplores the Federation of Cleanliness Companies

The Federation of Cleanliness Companies – which brings together 15,000 companies and 605,000 employees – presented Tuesday, March 25, during a press conference which France Inter attended, its Blue book Containing 25 solutions to change the look at the cleanliness sector.

Among the themes to be improved according to the Federation: the change of mentalities on women and household men in business. The day schedules find it difficult to win, forcing them to work early in the morning or late in the evening. The sector therefore pleads for daytime work to become the reference and that companies are forced to justify their refusal.

Among the reasons mentioned not to change these hours, there are sentences like “The vacuum cleaner will make too much noise” Or “The agent will bother me during my work”regrets Patricia Charrier-Izel, Managing Director of the Federation of Cleanliness Companies. For her, these are false apology since today “The vacuum cleaners are without noise and then above all we form our agents”.

According to Philippe Jouanny, the president of the federation, current hours are a hiring brake: “To tell a youngster that he will have to get up early and go to bed late is not necessarily what is most attractive.” He therefore pleads for an development of day schedules which could suit other profiles and thus make it possible to recruit more in a sector which needs to hire 6,000 people per year. Another argument put forward by the president, that of recognition. He thus evokes the pandemic of Covid, a period when cleanliness agents were particularly in demand: “Our employees were happy to be known, recognized, either invisible.”

In addition, the Federation recalls that former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal declared in January 2024, during his speech of general policy before the National Assembly, “Want to act to deploy work continuously and/or during the day in state public procurement and decentralized administrations”. A qualified declaration “considerable advance” by the Federation.

That said, the political context, “The dissolution of the Assembly” AND “The resignation of the Attal government” We “De facto complexified, the continuation of the file”regrets the federation which “will continue to carry the interest of publishing a cleanliness circular aimed at systematically including a feasibility study for the implementation of continuous work and/or during the day in public procurement”. “The idea remains : Wherever it is possible in a partnership approach “.