On television, the face of the female journalist Florence Aubenas had been seen a thousand times in the newspapers. He spent 157 days in captivity at the hands of the Iraqi rebels, with all of France watching him. When he informed his neighbors of his intention – to be one of the women who can’t live doing the worst jobs for a few months – he was recommended to change his name and appearance, to clear his head, to wear extravagant clothes... He guessed it the other way around: looking for a real name and apparently a job from one office to another, a job interview here and a short course there, no one knew him.

The book was published last spring by Aubenas. He baptized the Quai de Ouistreham because the ferry to England, which had a place of work, comes out of that rack. It was very popular in France. It has now been released in English as Night Cleaner. It has not been disseminated in Spanish.

Aubenas, who is working in the weekly Nouvel Observateur after a tour of the newspaper Libération, presented himself in February 2009 at the Pôle jobsi office in Caen, Normandy.

Tell the story of the new state of despair that gave the original names: A 48-year-old woman, mother of two children, who has not worked in recent years because they lived easily with her husband’s salary, recently separated from her husband, with no qualifications other than high school. “I’m willing to do any job,” he said to the job seeker, who responded: “That’s what they all say.” He finished the book with grief and sorrow. Like her, thousands more women could sign.

Six months was enough to get a good idea of the careers of women who bleed out in precarious professions. “For a quarter of an hour after I started, my knees swelled and my arms swollen,” he confesses. But not to find jobs. - The job? A lot of hours scattered early in the morning and late at night, on the ferry to England, in the campsites, in the offices.

The journalist was aiming to show on the skin how today the most vulnerable French people live, who have to spend the month with 700 euros. He rented a tiny apartment that costs 348 euros per month. But with what he had gained in six months, he would not have been able to pay all the expenses. I was grateful for the benefits of the book written about the Outreau case – a famous incident based on reports of pederasty, which was rounded off by a judge’s mistake.

The city of Caen, with 120,000 inhabitants, has been an industrial center. Greatly destroyed during World War II, General De Gaulle contributed with extraordinary respect. In recent years, it has lost most of its industry, with manufacturing relocated to poorer countries.
In places like this, the changes in the living conditions of workers in the last three decades are more evident. Like private companies, the public, as well as the institutions, have externalized their full functions to be given to subcontractors. Cleaning, for example. What company – or city council – has the cleaning staff as their employees today? Not in Caen, not in Lasarte-Oria.

all day or waiting or running

A woman in dire need of work will turn to employment agencies, where she discovers, first of all, that “wanting a job” is not enough. There are hundreds of them like him, he has to update his curriculum, he has to take courses, he has to show that he is motivated to be the boss. All efforts must be made without charge.

To overcome this, the fact that the jobs offered are not fixed is not the most serious problem: You will have to enter the hours fragmented as “slices”, some grains here, others there far away. Not to get all of them to earn 700 euros a month.

In order to be able to move from one to the other in the morning until very late in the evening, this woman will need someone to take her or give her car away. With the risk of being left hanging. “I suddenly realized how fragile my new life was and felt that I depended on anything and anyone,” writes Aubenas.

The time in these precarious factories is also different. Always waiting for a hiring interview, or waiting for the bus, or on the trip, or when the “official” employees are going to be delayed. Multiple unpaid hours to make some copies of paid hours.
Working time itself is like chewing gum, it can happen longer if it suits the owner: “The previous one cleaned this office in 2 hours, but according to our calculations you can do it in 1.5”, the master will tell you, although then Aubenas himself will need two to finish the task... 30 minutes less charged. Since cleaners are often working in groups, it’s no surprise that these rhythms give rise to quarrels.

Aubenas, however, has been particularly affected by the insensitivity of “normal” workers and the population. “Many believe that telling the cleaner that he is invisible is a compliment. We’re very happy with you, we don’t even see you.”

In the book he tells this cruel anecdote: once Aubenas went in to clean the offices like every day when all the workers left. A couple stayed and started hanging out there. Florence was sweeping beside them, but the two of them went on in the same way as if the cleanser were just one more trick, one more component of the broom. He had become invisible.
In commenting on the recently published book in English, Madeleine Bunting in The Guardian compares Florence Aubenas’s book with The Road to Wigan Pier, published in 1937 by George Orwell. Orwell was a whistleblower, he claimed a different society. Aubenas’s looks more raw and dark. Today the workers are more desperate. “They mark, humiliate, persecute and crush so many mentors, trainers, employers and team leaders (...) It is cruel to be a person in this culture that they constantly promote the individuality of the person.”

The stress in the media is still considered a problem for executives and those with great responsibilities. On the other hand, those who basically live in stress and lose their health are the many workers, often women, who are working in substandard jobs.

Florence Aubenas denounces in some of the presentations of the book that the rest of the workers have internalized the invisibility of the cleaners. “Who has decided that they should act when the offices are empty? Can't they do the cleaning while we're working? And the institutions, can’t they organize the cleanings of nearby residences in groups?” Since we don't see them...