The advert, published in Les Echos, continues with a description of an 18 hour week, eight weeks vacation and a salary of €4,000 per month. However, unions have dismissed it as misleading, and have said that a 151 hour working week for a gross salary of around half the amount quoted is nearer the mark.
The media war has come about as a result of the three week strike at the port, a campaign by the workers called “Hands of my port”, and more than 50 oil tankers waiting outside Marseilles, all following attempted port reforms.
Among other moves, the workers’ CGT union is resisting plans to create a subsidiary to run the terminals, despite Marseille Port Authority assurances that it will hold a majority stake in the new company and that the jobs of the 220 staff will be maintained.
It all comes against a wider background of French industrial unrest against plans to reform the pension system, with more protests from a number of bodies, including the railways.