“It’s resourcefulness”: in Sète, employers struggle to accommodate seasonal workers

Sète vu du ciel. Midi Libre – EVA TISSOT

Between resourcefulness and difficulty, employers in the Thau basin are organizing themselves as best they can to accommodate their seasonal employees. 

Shared by all stakeholders, the housing problem in Sète is one of the main obstacles to hiring seasonal contracts.Claude Herzog, head of the beach bar union, the observes on its scale. "In Sète, housing is overpriced. We try to recruit people as close as possible, but sometimes we have no choice." 

Claude Herzog estimates that around 35% of his employees come from outside the Thau basin. Consequence: the trader decided to invest in apartments to house some of his seasonal workers. "I've had three homes for ten years now, but that's not enough", he notes.For the rest of its 48 employees, " are left to fend for themselves, with local real estate agencies".

"We are reaching the limits of the system"

On the agricultural side, Guilhem Viroux, secretary general of the Chamber of Agriculture, highlights the impossibility for the employer to build housing capable of ;accommodate seasonal workers. "We put them up at home or in a secondary house. Sometimes, it's with friends or friends of friends: we're reaching the limits of the system here.&quot ;

 For Yamina Chihib, director of the local youth integration mission in the Thau basin, housing for young workers is indeed a serious subject.  "We do not have the competence in this area, but we would have to imagine public policies in conjunction with the hotel and catering unions to make facing this problem."