For economically and socially responsible games – The Paris 2024 Social Charter
Organising the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Olympics) does have implications beyond the world of sports. It involves building infrastructure, procuring a range of goods and services, ensuring additional service provision – all of which represent opportunities and challenges for local economic and social development. Recognising this major opportunity, social partners in France signed the Paris 2024 Social Charter on 19 June 2018 to ensure the Olympics would have a lasting social and economic impact.
The idea of a Social Charter goes back to an initiative of major workers’ federations in the year 2012 when the city of Paris first applied to host the Olympics. When the opportunity to reapply presented itself, the idea was taken up again, and included in the application file. After being awarded the organisation of the 2024 Olympics in 2017, employers’ federations were asked to join the initiative, given the opportunities this also represented for the private sector, including SMEs.
The Social Charter is structured around the following four pillars:
1. Tripartite Governance for social impact
- Putting in place a tripartite committee overseeing implementation of the Social Charter and ensuring representation of social partners in the governance structure of the Organising Committee of the Olympics and Paralympics (COJOP) and the Olympic Games delivery authority (SOLIDEO).
- Ensuring that public procurement promotes economic development, benefits SMEs — by enhancing their access to information — and takes into account social and environmental aspects.
2. Decent work for sustainable socio-economic development
- Prevent discrimination in access to employment and in employment.
- Reinforce skills anticipation and support access to employment for disadvantaged groups of workers (youth, elderly, persons with disabilities, unemployed).
- Respect decent work along the supply chain.
- Enhance occupational safety and health.
- Ensure detached workers have access to information and fully enjoy their labour rights by raising awareness of employers.
3. Skills development for sustainable employment
- Support access to TVET and apprenticeship for long-term employment opportunities.
- Support the development of technical skills to enhance access to new employment opportunities during the Olympics and Paralympics.
- Reinforce recognition of prior learning for volunteers and support certification.
- Support occupational upgrading for workers employed during the Olympics and Paralympics.
4. Sports for socio-economic development
- Support the reconversion of the Olympic village to the benefit of local economic development.
- Encourage sports in the workplace.
- Promote international solidarity.
In 2018, the three largest employers’ federations (CPME, U2P, MEDEF) and the five largest workers’ federations (CFDT, CFE-CGC, CFTC, CGT, FO) as well as the Paris 2024 Organising Committee of the Olympics and Paralympics (COJOP) signed the Social Charter with the aim of creating a legacy that could benefit the labour market and society at large through a sustainable and responsible approach. The ILO provided assistance to its French constituents, and the Charter refers to the fundamental principles and rights at work and the decent work agenda. The Social Charter, even though not a legally binding document, but rather a political commitment, is putting human and sustainable development at its heart and gives special attention to disadvantaged geographical areas and vulnerable groups in the labour market. Back in 2018, social partners believed in the transformative power of the Olympics for lasting change – six years later they have proven right and succeeded in setting a precedent for the organisation of the Olympics.
Shortly after signing the charter, a committee overseeing its implementation was established and started to meet quarterly. The committee has been operational since 2019 and will continue functioning until 2025, to oversee the period before, during and after the Olympics, with special attention to the working conditions on the 68 Olympic construction sites across the Paris region. The committee is composed of workers and employers’ representatives who have signed the charter and is co-chaired by one worker representative and one employer representative.
Similarly, social partners were included in the governing bodies of COJOP and of the Olympic Games delivery authority (SOLIDEO). Monthly meetings allowed to scrutinise progress and monitor indicators, including number of jobs filled, types of employment contracts, and the number of occupational accidents.
The Social Charter committee has been working closely with COJOP and SOLIDEO to support the following initiatives:
- Identifying the 150 000 jobs that would be needed for the organisation of the Olympics, including existing and new jobs. This has helped to identify skill gaps in specific occupations and provide training accordingly.
- Enabling SMEs and the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE)[2] to benefit and apply to tenders
- Paying particular attention to informal work, particularly migrant workers in an irregular situation.
- Collaborating with the labour inspectorate to ensure working conditions along supply chains comply with decent work standards. A special inspection unit was created within the Regional Cross-departmental Directorate for the Economy, Employment, Labour and Solidarity (DRIEETS): 1 300 inspections were conducted between November 2019 and March 2024, and another 800 have been conducted since March 2024.[3] On average, one inspector was present on one of the 68 Olympic construction sites every day. Labour inspectors did intervene on numerous occasions because safety standards were not respected, for example, when scaffoldings were installed.
- Ensuring that each worker on the Olympic construction sites receives an occupational safety and health briefing before starting to work.
- Ensuring that derogations from the French labour code are only exceptionally allowed. One example is the special derogation for the 2 500 broadcasting workers and those organising sports competitions and managing venues. In addition, the weekly one-day rest period could be suspended twice per month during the Olympics. Finally, between 15 June and 30 September 2024, retailers providing goods and services close to the Olympic venues were allowed to open on a Sunday.
We would like this legacy to flourish and have positive impacts – It is an opportunity for the French model to shine and to set a precedent at the international level. Looking ahead, this should be an experience to be replicated and a prerequisite to organise the Olympics.
The Organising Committee of the Olympics and Paralympics (COJOP) and the Olympic Games delivery authority (SOLIDEO) together with the association Les Canaux, Maison des économies sociales et solidaires and the Yunus Centre, developed a responsible procurement strategy: the ESS 2024. The objective was to give local and economically, socially and environmentally responsible enterprises the possibility to be allocated a share of the Olympic Games contracts, which amounted to EUR 2.5 billion (contracts awarded by SOLIDEO) and EUR 2.7 billion (contracts awarded by COJOP). The programme is based on five pillars: circular economy, carbon neutrality and environmental preservation, social innovation, inclusion of people with disabilities, and value creation in local territories.
As part of this strategy, the Olympic Games delivery authority (SOLIDEO) committed to assigning 10% of contracted working hours to the unemployed and allocating 25% of contracts to SMEs and Social and Solidarity Economy organisations. COJOP in contrast did not set quotas, but rather asked specific questions to applying companies, including:
- How do you support a circular economy to reduce your carbon print?
- What do you do to employ persons with disabilities?
- What do you do to recruit people away from employment?
- What do you do to generate a local impact?
Under the ESS 2024, the following initiatives were put in place:
- A comprehensive study of the SSE ecosystem mapping over 6 000 companies.
- Providing information on economic opportunities and supporting capabilities of SSE actors through the provision of training and technical assistance.
- Splitting tenders into smaller contracts allowing smaller or more specialised companies to apply as well as incorporating social and environmental clauses or evaluation criteria with significant weighting favouring impact-driven businesses.
One of the SSE companies that benefitted from this programme is La Conciergerie Solidaire, a consortium focusing on inclusion and disability. La Conciergerie Solidaire was awarded a contract of nearly two million euros mobilising more than 350 people for the management and cleaning of the linen at the Athlete’s Village.
It is not a matter of French legislation adapting to the requirements of the Games. It’s the Games that have to adapt to social rights, which are clearly more advanced in France than in other countries, but they are rights that we have fought for.
- 181 000 people have been employed in Olympics-related jobs.
- 90% of suppliers are French with 79% being SMEs, including 500 SSE enterprises.
- 37% of committed amounts were billed to SMEs and SSE enterprises.
- The number of workplace accidents was four times lower compared to other construction sites in France (181 accidents were registered, no fatal accident).
- 4 000 out of the 30 000 employed construction workers were previously long-term unemployed.
- Formalisation of workers who were previously working without an employment contract and without access to social protection (often workers that had been working in France in an irregular situation for many years). According to CGT, 150 workers in an irregular situation were identified and 50 of them were supported to regularise their situation.
- Organisation of more than 500 jobs fairs.
The Social Charter can serve as a model for future Olympics and can set standards for the organisation of large-scale sports events globally. For example, trade unions are advocating for its replication for the 2030 Winter Games that will take place in the French Alps. Further, on the trade union side, preliminary discussions have been held with Californian trade unions in preparation for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
The long-term impact will have to be carefully assessed after the Olympics, especially to determine whether training opportunities and fixed-term contracts actually led to more stable employment. More critical voices have highlighted that there is risk of social washing if no concrete measures are implemented to follow-up on commitments (Gibon, 2024). The trade union CGT has pointed out a lack of consultation with social partners when modifying working hours, rest periods and working modalities (see permitted derogations to the French labour code listed above). For example, retailers are allowed to open on Sundays between 15 June and 30 September, even though this extends far beyond the period of the Olympics (CGT, 2024).
An assessment of the 2012 London Olympics, which were the first Games to include employment improvements in its legacy plans, has shown that the local workforce only benefitted from lower-skilled manual jobs, while higher-skilled jobs were filled by a transnational workforce already experienced in the delivery of bigger scale projects. Support for upskilling and career progression was not provided. Nevertheless, they were the first Games to bring attention to the employment dimension and possible inequalities (Vadiati, 2020). Assessing the impact of the Rio Olympics, a survey conducted by the Social Policy Centre at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in 2016 found that the income of the poorest 5% in Rio de Janeiro grew by 29.3%, compared to a rise of 19.96% for the richest 5% in the pre-Olympic period (FGV Social: Centro de Políticas Sociais, 2016).
Key Lessons
Decent work and fair play go together. Workers are behind the successful organisation of large-scale sports events and their labour rights need to be protected.
Signing the Social Charter was not enough. It was key to follow-up on commitments and put in place concrete measures and regularly monitor progress.
Looking ahead, the Paris 2024 Social Charter has the potential to set a precedent for the organisation of future Olympic and Paralympic Games and other large-scale sports events.
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