A year that he feels “prohibited from work” with the end of marriages and private gatherings, since the start of the Covid-19 crisis.
At 38, Nicolas Debordes, butler, can no longer go around in circles at home on weekends, without being able to touch a penny or tender a single small oven.
Like his fellow cooks or waiters, these "event extras" who are usually so affable and discreet, in recent months he has multiplied demonstrations and punching operations to make himself heard and bring his little-known status out of invisibility. .
Because there you are.
For almost 20 years that Nicolas has worked, he has never been hired on a permanent contract, but he alternates between the customary fixed-term contracts (CDDU) during which he sometimes works 60 hours per week and the "off-peak periods" of inactivity during which he lives thanks to the benefits of Pôle emploi.
A kind of intermittence that no longer speaks its name, since 2014 and the loss of its specific unemployment insurance scheme, which is more favorable than the general scheme to which it is subject today.
"I have always worked hard, I earned a decent living, I went on vacation," said the father of four children who had fallen into poverty in recent months.
I took my children from the canteen, I learned to turn down the heat at home.
Normal life is behind months, ”this spokesperson for the OPRE (organization of staff in event catering), created in the context of the crisis, is in despair.
"The social fall"
Baudoin Desplanque-Lussert, also proudly orchestrated buffets and corporate events, was forced to sell his house.
“Before March 2020, I was receiving a very decent salary.
Since then, it's been the social fall, ”admits, bitterly, the 43-year-old man, owner of a 90 m2 house in a residential area of Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine), who moves to a smaller apartment. of a popular district.
Like Nicolas, like 15,000 to 20,000 people in this situation in France, Baudoin has been sounding the alarm for months.
“It's not over, he worries.
The unemployment insurance reform planned to come into force from July 1 will drastically lower our rights ”.
In response, the Ministry of Labor has just commissioned two parliamentarians, the deputy Jean-François M'Baye (LREM) and the senator Xavier Iacovelli (LREM).
Objective: to get out of precariousness and create a new status for these “intermittent events” as part of the future reform.
"We hope to be able to return our copy very quickly, by May," says Xavier Iacovelli.