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Editorial – Philippe MISSOFFE
Managing Director, GICAN
With a turnover exceeding 13 billion euros and more than 51,000 jobs, the naval industry is a dynamic and growing sector that serves as a pillar of national sovereignty. However, it faces numerous new challenges: competitiveness (particularly against unfair competition), internationalization, the green energy transition, and innovation. These major turning points, crucial for the industry’s sustainability, can only be successfully navigated by implementing a proactive employment and professional training policy.
Indeed, French expertise, recognized worldwide, is rooted in the high quality of training provided to future workers, technicians, and engineers. Yet, naval professions suffer from a critical issue: a lack of attractiveness.
The appeal of becoming a senior technician or a highly skilled worker remains low, despite salaries being higher than those found in the service sector. Furthermore, the prospects for career advancement and social mobility are significant.
It is essential that training programs meet the needs of companies to ensure the rapid entry of students into the workforce. However, both the quantity and quality of current training programs are falling short. According to a recent study by the Metallurgy Joint Observatory, for three of the 30 ‘”‘critically undersupplied’ professions in the industry, current training centers meet only 50% of the entire industry’s needs.
This is why GICAN and the members of the Maritime Industry Strategic Committee (CSF IM), in partnership with five coastal regions, created CINAV (the Maritime Industry Campus) in 2018.
CINAV carries out several missions, including, enhancing the sector’s attractiveness through the ‘Navire des métiers’ (Vessel of Trades) inititative, creating ‘marimization’ modules intended for schools and companies, developing curricula with vocational schools to ensure training better aligns with corporate requirements.
Training centers that implement these modules with CINAV’s support receive a quality label. This provides employers with a guarantee of excellence for rapid recruitment and significantly improves the job placement rates for young people, particularly those from vocational high schools.
With over 30 professions currently facing labor shortages in the naval industry—most of which are shared with other industrial sectors also under high pressure—the naval sector must find a way to stand out. This raises the question of professional training and its adaptation to industrial needs, but also the issues of posted workers and skilled immigration, which are now essential to maintaining production capacities in France.
Several draft laws, by adopting energetic and targeted provisions, now have the potential to be a game-changer for the naval industry and, more broadly, for French industry as a whole.