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ANSES Flags Elevated Health Risks for France’s Cleaning Staff, Calling for a Rethink of Work Organization

The agency links subcontracting-driven off-hours schedules to heavier workloads that harm a largely female workforce.

Overview

  • Covering roughly 1.2 to 1.4 million employees, about 5% of salaried workers, the report finds twice the recognized occupational disease rate compared with other sectors.
  • ANSES identifies intensified cadences, fragmented hours, isolated work, and routine exposure to cleaning chemicals as core drivers of musculoskeletal, respiratory and dermatological problems.
  • About 35% of agents now work via subcontractors, a growing share that reduces allocated cleaning time and increases pace, with some reports of noncompliance on overtime rules.
  • Workforce precarity is widespread with short contracts, multiple employers, part-time schedules and low unionization, and accidents and inaptitude dismissals occur more often than average.
  • Recommendations include shifting cleaning to daytime, targeted TMS prevention, visual risk-training materials and stronger obligations for contracting companies, with long-term cancer risks flagged for further study.