REPORTAGE
"The priority for the coming months is to restart our activity, save as much employment as possible, and create new ones through the economic recovery plan." This Friday morning on Europe 1, the new Minister of Labor Élisabeth Borne was clear concerning the course taken by the government to face the major economic crisis which is announced after the coronavirus. In Hauts-de-France, the emphasis is on training to fight unemployment.
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Work that "makes more sense"
While back to school will be difficult economically, the Hauts-de-France region and Pôle emploi have decided to focus on training to allow the new influx of unemployed to find work as quickly as possible. Among the beneficiaries of this training, Coline, a former Lille stylist who now works ... beer. "I wanted to reconnect with a job that made more sense to me, that stuck to my ethics and that made me use my hands," she explains at the microphone of Europe 1.
If Coline spent "a lot of time in an office behind a computer", it is now in the middle of the stainless steel vats and bottles of the eco-friendly Lille micro-brewery "Le singe savant" that she spends her days. A radical change that took place via two immersion internships and three months of brewing training funded by Pôle emploi.
A welcomed strategy
A system praised by Guillaume, the co-founder of the micro-brewery, since it has the double advantage of allowing "the person in training to keep his unemployment benefits", while the company gets to know his new recruit for "see if it works well, and transform training into hiring". This is exactly the story of Coline, who landed a fixed-term contract for six months in this business close to her home.
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Proximity and sustainable development
And it is also another trend that is emerging among job seekers: proximity. "Since Covid-19, there is the desire to stay closer to home. Job seekers therefore look at the jobs available within a certain area so that they no longer have to make long journeys," confirms Nadine Crinier, Pôle Emploi director in Hauts-de-France. This proximity is also coupled with a desire "to be on things that are part of sustainable development", she adds.
In this region, which has 560,000 unemployed, 90,000 places have opened up to learn a new trade.