A commune of Gironde offers summer jobs to adolescents

In Langon, in Gironde, the “pocket money” device allows young people aged 16 to 18 to earn some money in summer against work for the city, up to 60 euros for three half-days per week.

Who said young people no longer wanted to work? In Langon, in Gironde, a commune of 7,000 inhabitants, the town hall offers adolescents every summer between 16 and 18 years old to do small work for the city, especially in cleanliness, cemeteries or the swimming pool. These young people help municipal officials three half-days per week and in exchange, they are paid 60 euros. It is often the very first work experience in their lives.

In her yellow combination, Soléa, 17, is about to collect the first dog droppings in her life. Clara, the city’s cleaning agent, initiates it: “You put your gloves, you take the bag, you catch and after, you turn it over. And we make the knot!” The high school student smiles: “Not easy as the first day, but you have to get used to …”

The teenager was denied all seasonal jobs, because she is not yet 18 years old: “At 17, we are not offered a lot of things.” Soléa, in particular, postulated in a famous fast food chain: “I was not taken because I was a little below the age limit. Suddenly, I decided to apply for ‘pocket money’.”

The city’s cleanliness agent stresses that this device allows Soléa to realize the incivility of passers -by. The teenager subscribed: “I did not think that there could be as much waste and the job that it is to collect it!” Each young person who passes in the service of Clara returns from it, assures the agent: “They say to me: ‘I tell my friends not to put on the ground and they pay attention.” “

The town hall recruited 13 young people this summer. The regulations are strict: adolescents do not work more than three hours a day and three days a week, paid 60 euros in total. The town does not really need it, but the youth assistant Dominique Chauveau-Zébert rather sees it as an activity for young people: “There is really a request from young people to be able to work in summer job. It is very rewarding for them.”

“They want pocket money and then for many, they find the holidays a little long.”

Dominique Chauveau-Zébert

in franceinfo

“It allows them to be busy if they cannot leave or go for a weekend with friends …”concludes the assistant. Since she started, Soléa has already met high school friends in the street: “Small peak of jealousy anyway, when we see them get up at 11 am and we at 8 am … But afterwards, we say to ourselves that it is for a good cause.”

About the 60 euros paid by the town hall, Soléa is satisfied: “I think it’s okay. It’s really money that we earned ourselves, your money to yourself. We do not depend on the pocket money that our parents give us. I am a big reader so I think I will spend them in books.” The town hall pays the liquid salary so that young people can touch it directly, rather than pay it to the parents’ bank account.