Concierges--and a French Tradition--Face Extinction in Hard Times

Hard times are squeezing some of the soul out of French cities as door codes and intercoms, commercial cleaning services and steel mailboxes gradually replace the broom-wielding, eagle-eyed concierge.

As much a symbol of “Frenchness” as the beret, seemingly as essential as the daily baguette, concierges over the centuries have been peeping out of ground-floor cubbyholes, screening would-be visitors to any apartment building worth its bourgeois salt.

Concierges have been an integral part of the French cityscape since the 13th Century, when a handful of them safeguarded convents and nobles’ homes. To historian Jean-Louis Deaucourt, these custodians of domiciles rank as a landmark institution on a par with Versailles and the Folies-Bergere.

But the concierge is a fast-dwindling species. Last year, France counted 93,250, mostly women, including 460 over the age of 80. There are 20,000 concierges in Paris now, compared to 60,000 in 1965.

Consuelo Mas was the kind of concierge Parisian apartment-dwellers dream about. Resourceful, immaculate, eager to please--until she plunged to her death cleaning a seventh-floor windowpane. Like many concierges under pressure from their increasingly cash-strapped co-ops, the 48-year-old mother of four worried about becoming one of the 2,000 thrown out of work every year.

“Mrs. Mas lost her life trying to save her job,” said Patrick Barbero, legal director at the General Union for the Defense of Concierges and Household Workers.

“Under existing labor regulations, Mrs. Mas was not obliged to be climbing ladders and cleaning windows seven stories up,” he said. “But she did what the co-op wanted. They wrote it into her contract and threatened to fire her if she didn’t. The bottom line is that they didn’t want to shell out more money for professional window washers.”

Full-time concierges, who earn about $545 a month, are becoming a luxury that the pinched middle-class can barely afford. Many co-ops are forced to rent the cramped, street-level concierge apartments known as “loges” to finance urgent repairs and even basic maintenance.

“People think they can save money by eliminating the concierge, but they’re wrong,” Barbero said. “The concierge performs innumerable social services whose cost can’t be calculated, including security.”

For historian Deaucourt, few professions have gripped the French imagination like the concierge. Vilified as a nosy gossip or glorified as the ultimate symbol of salt-of-the-earth working class, the concierge has fascinated novelists and filmmakers such as Emile Zola, Louis-Ferdinand Celine and Jean Renoir.

With their eyes trained on their tenants, concierges have long been regarded as valuable police informants. Today, the success of a drug bust often depends on the concierge. So do some probes by private detectives tracking unfaithful spouses.

Sheri Weiller, an American business school teacher, says she avoids her concierge whenever possible.

“She tells me everything I never wanted to know about my neighbors, and never asked,” Weiller said.

Many Holocaust survivors owe their lives to their concierge. Sylvain Flaxberg, returning home from work in July, 1942, saw his concierge shaking her head, motioning him not to go upstairs where Gestapo agents waited to arrest him.

She hid him in a nearby apartment where he watched French gendarmes take away his wife and 8-year-old son, never to return.

Three years ago, high school English teacher Fabienne Receptor moved her family into a new complex in eastern Paris--without a concierge.

“The lobby has been vandalized, cars in the underground parking lot are continually broken into, mailboxes have been wrecked,” she said. “These things wouldn’t have happened if there had been a concierge, and the cost would be less than what we’ve already spent on repairs.”

The concierge always has been near the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, but with an acute housing shortage and unemployment at 10.5%, the job of concierge--now respectfully a “gardien” --has become desirable. A recent opening in a working-class neighborhood drew 260 applicants, despite living quarters the size of a walk-in closet.

French-born concierges are increasingly outnumbered by foreigners. More than half the concierges in Paris are Portuguese--often turf-conscious women who hand down their loges to family and friends fresh from the old country, sometimes for a hefty finder’s fee.

Maria Bras, 32, a concierge in the heart of the Paris garment district, contacted the 6-year-old union with a common complaint. After she stopped hauling out heavy trash bins filled up by a business in the building, the management threatened to fire her.

By law, she is responsible for household trash only.

“They also expect me to free up the elevator when it gets stuck and made it clear my job is at stake,” she said. “But what will happen if there’s a problem? I’m responsible. I want to help out, I want to please, but enough is enough.”

Reluctantly, Bras sought help from Barbero.

“Management knows the concierges are defenseless, but once we reach them, they back down,” he said. “Last week, with a single call, I got a full-time concierge a raise and back pay. She had been paid less than what part-timers earn.”

Most Paris concierges are unaware of Barbero’s union, more a support group than a formal trade syndicate.

“Most aren’t even aware they have rights,” said Rosita Pelufo, president of the union and a full-time concierge herself. “The lack of information is what opens doors to abuse.”

Concierges formed their first lobby--largely ineffective--in 1903. They got their first paid vacation in 1939, but didn’t earn the right to a daily break until 1956.

For Barbero, perpetuating romantic myths about concierges won’t save them from extinction. Legal action may protect a few isolated cases, but not the profession itself, he said.

But hundreds of large urban residences and suburban high-rise complexes built over the last 25 years could not survive without the concierge--mostly married couples these days, whose myriad and often unpaid tasks include collecting rent, giving emergency first-aid and counseling troubled teen-agers.

In 1987, Guilaine and Andre Gardyn fled mounting unemployment in their native Dunkerque for the three-room loge of a modern, 186-apartment complex tucked behind the Bastille.

Guilaine Gardyn, 44, likes her job and enjoys her contact with residents, but complains about the long hours. They have three days off a month.

“We do a million little things that people take for granted, and that aren’t in our contracts,” Andre Gardyn said. “But I do it because I like the work. I’d like to learn how to fix the elevator and the garage doors.”

Andre Gardyn also saves lives. Several elderly tenants are equipped with radio devices that alert him in emergencies.

“We’ve got their house keys and get right in,” he said. “I can’t remember how many times I’ve helped the 92-year-old lady on the 5th floor.”

Will Paris lose something if the concierge becomes an endangered species?

“An intercom can’t replace a concierge,” Pelufo said. “It has no soul.”