The sector, already in “permanent tension for years”, lost a large number of staff during the health crisis and “Pôle emploi has a very low stock of job seekers targeted at our activity”, explains to AFP Thierry Grégoire, president of the seasonal Umih.

This is why employers “do not refrain from looking at good practices in other sectors, such as agriculture”, he says.

For several years, ANETI, the equivalent of Pôle emploi in Tunisia, “has been working on the mobility of Tunisian seasonal employees with the agricultural world and the FNSEA, to supplement the needs of companies when there are deficiencies in certain types of posts”, reports Mr. Grégoire.

As part of an agreement that Umih wants to sign in June in Tunis, the organization will put ANETI in touch with French companies wishing to recruit Tunisian seasonal workers for a maximum of five months, paid according to the salary scales of the branch. hotels and restaurants in France.

This system, which will actually be put in place in 2023, “will remain very marginal” because “the priority remains to hire job seekers in France, but the pool does not make it possible to fill all the positions”, continues the employer manager.

Employers must be able to accommodate these Tunisian employees, who will submit their application on the HCR-EMPLOI recruitment platform created by Umih.

“This possibility has existed for more than 20 years. Up to now it has not interested our sector too much, but given the shortage of jobs we are facing, we want to explore this additional avenue to hire seasonal workers”, indicates Ms. Grégoire, specifying that discussions on this subject began almost a year ago with the Ministry of the Interior.

Since 2003, an agreement on the exchange of young professionals between the two countries has given access to the French labor market to young Tunisians with diplomas or experience in many sectors (construction, hotels and restaurants, IT, the medical sector , personal services, etc.) and enables young French professionals to work in Tunisia.

There are such bilateral agreements with a dozen countries (Morocco, Argentina, Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, United States, Hungary, Poland…).