French working
life comes with a whole glossary of work terms (and acronyms) that you never
learned at language school. Here's what you need to know.
Photo: AFP
Here is the journey through work life - from unemployment, to finding a
job, enjoying the perks, then losing your job.
Emploi
Well, we may as well start easy. Emploi, as you may have guessed, means
"employment". French newspapers will often have their own
"Emploi" sections if you want to read up on the latest employment
news. Here is one from Le Figaro.
Pôle emploi
With employment comes unemployment, which typically leads people to
France's national job centre - known as the Pôle emploi.
RSA - Revenue de solidarité active
This is France's basic form of job seekers allowance and you may be able to
claim it while you look for work, although there are various and varied
conditions.
CV
Yes, you'll need
one of these in French. Don't be tempted to put resumé at
the top. This is a pesky false friend.
If your CV is good enough then it should lead to a job interview - an
"entretien d'embauche" or just an entretien. Fingers crossed.
Contrat de
travail
Got the job? Well done. Now you'd better sign your employment contract,
known in France as a "contrat de travail". This is a hugely important
piece of paper, and is often needed when moving into a new house, applying for
a bank account (or indeed a bank loan).
CDI
If you're lucky, the paper that you sign will be CDI contract, which stands
for "Contract Duration Indeterminée" – or an open-ended contract.
This essentially means you are a permanent employee. Well done.
CDD
The other (more likely) option is that you're on a CDD (Contract Duration
Determinée), or a fixed-term contract. This is just a temporary gig, but can be
extended, two or three times. It may eventually turn into a CDI if it works out
well.
There are other types of job contracts on offer that depending on your line
of work could see you end up a pigiste (shifter), an intermittent (occassional
worker often employed in arts scene) or a saisoniere (a
seasonal worker might do a ski season or wine harvest).
SMIC
Time to talk pay. France's minimum wage, known as SMIC, is €9.67 as of
2016, or €1,466.62 a month.
Salariés
Employees. This is you.
Cadres
On the other end of the spectrum, you have the "cadres" - these
are the managers, the executives. These lucky ones get better salaries and
better social protection if they're made redundant. Although they will have
paid more into the system so it's all fair.
Auto-entrepreneur
Another possibility is to run your own business, of course. There's minimal
red tape (once you have set yourself up), no need to pay taxes or charges up
front and many employers will welcome you with open arms as they avoid having
to pay the steep charges that come with having a contract.
Ticket restos
Time to talk perks. "Tickets restos" or luncheon vouchers are
mandatory in offices with no on-site cafeteria or self-service kitchen.
Managers and workers split the cost 50/50, and employees end up with vouchers
they can use in most supermarkets and restaurants around the country.
RTT
Bosses must compensate you, in most jobs, for working more than 35 hours
per week, and if you do so you should be entitled to RTT days (Réduction du
Temps de Travail).
These are in addition to your usual paid holidays and are part of the
reason why French workers are often able to take the whole of August off. In
theory employers who don’t give you this time off should have to pay you
overtime.
ITT
Injured? An ITT, which stands for Incapacité temporaire de travail (or
"Temporary work incapacity"), refers to how many paid days a doctor
suggests you should take off after some kind of injury or trauma. The term
crops up often in newspapers to describe how badly someone is injured "He
got 45 days of ITT".
Treizième mois
Some businesses offer a "thirteenth month" of pay - an
end-of-year bonus of sorts - often in a bid to boost staff retention.
Commité d'enterprise
This is a kind of council in some companies that offers you anything from
cheap cinema tickets, holiday discounts and a nice wad of vouchers to spend at
Christmas.
Impôts sur le revenue
Oh, the famous French taxman. No, it's not all laughter and perks in the
French work place. Be ready for the income tax.
The graph below explains how much income tax you will pay depending on your
earnings.
L'impôt à la source
France is set to get a simplified tax system this year which will see
income tax taken automatically at source (à la source) rather than the
following year after the individual annual declarations.
Fiche de paie
France's payslips are notoriously complicated. They can stretch to 40 lines
of text of gobbldygook, but the good news is that they're working to make it
simpler. Read more here.
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