Job seekers becoming more and more violent? France Travail reveals worrying figures

France Travail reported around 16,000 reports of assault in their agencies in 2023. An increasing figure which could have several explanations.

This is a fairly alarming report: around forty attacks or incivility take place in France Travail agencies every day, according to an internal document revealed by the Politis site. In 2023, 15,906 reports of attacks were recorded among the country's 900 agencies, a figure up 12% compared to 2022.

Half of the reports refer to verbal aggression but sometimes the situation escalates. 143 physical attacks were reported last year, including 45 which were proven to involve money and occurred in an agency or nearby. France Travail employees also face customers in distress, who sometimes go so far as to make suicidal threats. 3,000 such cases were recorded in 2023. The rest of the reports include behavioral aggression and incivility. All these data have been on the rise for five years and in particular incivility with an increase of 82% since 2019.

In this internal document, France Travail explains this rise in tensions by the current context in society and in particular the figures linked to delinquency which are increasing. For SNAP, the leading company union, this problem is rather linked to the current job market as well as the pressure put on job seekers who are deemed not “sufficiently active in their searches”. The upcoming unemployment insurance reform increases concerns. The government has, in fact, announced the arrival of new, more restrictive compensation rules from July 1, 2024. These three parameters mean that "the reception conditions of users lead them to be more verbally and physically aggressive", thus analyzed Laurent Mérique, the president of SNAP, as reported by FranceInfo.

If France Travail agents are already encouraged to report any incident, the company will generalize video protection. It will also train its employees to deal with different risk situations such as armed intrusions or suicide threats from their customers.