Working hours, a mirror of the specificities of home care in France

Working time in the French healthcare sector is a patchwork of derogations.All care and support workers, whether they work in institutions or at home, are subject toextensive and irregular working hours, with rest periods that are often inadequate, which increases the risk of accidents at work and exhaustion (tiredness). Home care and support workers are subject to these time constraints tenfold, partly because of the characteristicsof the location, which corresponds to a number of private homes located in a more or less extensive geographical area, and partly because of the dual role of beneficiary/employer. The working hours of homecare workers are one of the main reasons why this professional activityis considered to be one of the most back-breaking, least qualified and least remunerated, because it remains discredited despite its ephemeral link with essential workers during the Covid pandemic, and because it is indelibly associated with gender prejudice. With one exception, adjustments to working hours

are never the result of the wishes of the worker, but of imposed constraints, which create tensions with the rights of non-working time workers, whose effective legal and conventional protection comes up against two structural problems: the funding of care and the shortage of labour. [Publisher's text]