Candidates of North African origin are penalized for obtaining a job at the hospital, according to a report. “Unacceptable”, for Marisol Touraine.
The 1.2 million hospital civil servants are not all on the same footing. This is the conclusion of Yannick L’HORTY’s report entitled Discrimination in access to public employment given this Tuesday to Prime Minister Manuel Valls. Faced with this scourge of prejudice linked to ethnicity or geographical origin in terms of hiring, the public hospital service remains on the front line.
To affirm this, the authors of this work carried out discrimination tests between the months of October 2015 and April 2016 for nursing positions. First, the candidate’s gender and origin criteria were tested in 150 hospitals. The principle is to formulate fictitious requests for information from an administration on the procedures to follow to apply for a job.
Thus, three fictitious identities were constructed: a male candidate who indicates a Franco-French origin (Thomas Martin) by his surname and his first name; a candidate who indicates a Franco-French origin by her surname and her first name (Laure Bernard); and finally a candidate who indicates a North African origin by a Moroccan surname and first name (Anissa Ali).
Better to be called Laure than Anissa
And the results are irrevocable. Laure obtained 35 positive responses out of her 153 requests while her male counterpart, Thomas, obtained 33. Anissa, she received barely 25. “The difference between Laure and Thomas is not statistically significant”, conclude writers. “But the difference between Laure and Anissa is significant,” they add. They assessed this risk at 5.7%.
Then, they tested the effect of North African origin and that of place of residence in access to employment, by sending a total of 3,258 applications in response to 1,086 job offers. Once again, these tests indicate that candidates of North African origin are penalized in the public hospital service, and that the same applies to candidates who live in a district covered by city policy.
“These discriminations are sometimes more marked in private than public hospitals, and they are stronger for jobs that fall under category C and are more marked for contractual jobs”, they specify.
“Unacceptable” results for Marisol Touraine
The Minister of Health was quick to react. “The results of this “testing” in the public hospital are unacceptable: the public hospital must be exemplary in the fight against discrimination, both vis-à-vis patients and vis-à-vis professionals. who work there,” she told AFP.
However, Marisol Touraine insisted on emphasizing: “I know that these results are not the consequence of a discriminatory intention on the part of the establishments, but there are malfunctions that must be assessed and corrected without delay. I will make every effort to guarantee the exemplary nature of the public hospital in the face of discrimination”.
Government solutions
In response to these results, the Minister of Health unveiled the content of an action plan that will soon be deployed to assess and correct the discrimination noted. It will first of all ask that these results be presented to all directors of public health establishments. And that each Human Resources (HR) department analyzes its recruitment practices.
With the support of the Fédération Hospitalière de France (FHF), it will also build self-assessment modules for healthcare establishments: “Directors will thus be able, with the support of their staff representatives, to assess their internal practices and correct dysfunctions”.
Finally, the Minister undertakes to carry out a national test within six months on a panel of public establishments representing all types of structures, throughout the territory. And the results will be made public, she has already warned.
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