Europe 1 with AFP 1:49 p.m., February 18, 2024

Childcare assistants, educators of young children, but also cooks or psychomotor therapists... The Bordeaux town hall is launching a vast recruitment campaign for the second time in a few months, with posters covering the streets of the city.

"And if it were you ?" : faced with a shortage of staff in early childhood, the Bordeaux town hall is launching a vast recruitment campaign for the second time in a few months, with posters covering the streets of the city.

All profiles sought in early childhood

Childcare assistants, educators of young children, but also cooks or psychomotor therapists... All profiles are sought, says the environmentalist municipality which also communicates on Facebook, LinkedIn, X and Instagram. “At the start of the 2023 school year, there were around 70 vacant positions in municipal nurseries, and therefore around a hundred frozen cradles,” Fannie Le Boulanger, deputy for early childhood at the town hall, explains to AFP.

In Caudéran, a residential district in the west of the city, the environmentalist municipality carried out work in a crèche to increase from 20 to 40 cradles, "but today it is at 30 cradles", due to lack of staff, deplores the elected. A “huge frustration” for the town hall, but especially for families who are struggling to find childcare for their children.

The Gironde metropolis, which has attracted more than 100,000 new inhabitants over the last ten years, is not an isolated case, since there is a shortage of around 10,000 professionals in France, according to the national union of early childhood professionals.

Early childhood careers are no longer attractive

Elodie Saint Germain has run the Carreire municipal crèche in Bordeaux for two years. For 40 cradles, she should have a team of around fifteen people. “Between long work stoppages, very difficult to replace, and small absenteeism, we are missing two people today, sometimes up to four,” she says. “We therefore sometimes have to work at a tight pace, occasionally closing a section or reducing opening hours,” she laments, explaining that even if this situation puts parents’ organization in difficulty, “it is the well-being of the child that always comes first.”

For her, early childhood professions are no longer attractive due in particular to time constraints for employees often living far away, due to rising rents, and "rather low" remuneration. A childcare assistant on a fixed-term contract has a salary, without bonus, barely above the minimum wage.

Ms. Saint Germain also mentions the lack of flexibility and the significant physical and psychological fatigue that these jobs cause. She welcomes the town hall's initiative "but to resolve the underlying problem, it must come from higher up, with real increases in salary scales". “A job with a lot of constraints and very little recognition,” she sums up.

And yet, the educational coordinator of the CAP Early Childhood Educational Support (AEPE) at the Bel Orme technological and vocational high school in Bordeaux, receives “very motivated” candidates for these professions every year. “But they quickly turn back because they have not found a work-study program, while the structures say they are in shortage,” regrets Aude Adolphi. “Last year, we had around thirty candidates and only four managed to find an apprenticeship, five agreed to do unpaid internships and the others gave up,” she says.

In Bordeaux, a third of professionals in collective crèches are over 50 years old

This accumulation of difficulties is straining a sector where the age pyramid is very aging with retirements difficult to replace. In Bordeaux, a third of professionals in collective crèches are over 50 years old. “For years there has been a huge lack of anticipation of the needs of the sector. The government must now make it a national priority because it is also the employment of women in general that is at stake,” says Madame Le Boulanger.

With its recruitment campaign, "the city of Bordeaux has decided to raise awareness of this subject, which is at the heart of family life", she continues, without hoping to work miracles.

Because the town hall refuses as much as possible to hire non-qualified staff, as permitted since August 31, 2022 by a ministerial decree which formalizes the exemptions granted “exceptionally” to establishments experiencing severe shortages. The first campaign in October resulted in 18 recruitments for 43 applications.