French Labor Pains

...The alternative, legal self-employment, is expensive...

...Employers would like this government to progress farther down that road...

...The 35-hour proposal has soured employers' relations with the government, especially with Labor Minister Martine Aubry...

...At the other end are the 16-25-year-olds, unevenly hit by unemployment: 25 per cent of those who have dropped out of high school, 8 per cent of the age group as a whole, but 40 per cent of those of North African descent regardless of their educational level...

...On January 13, the various employers' federations jointly asked the government to drop the idea...

...Jospin's Center-Right predecessor, Alain Juppé, timidly started lowering the company tax and Social Security's share of the payroll...

...As things stand, employers resort mostly to temps—and to the underground economy...

...Although the premises were clean and modern, there was no receptionist in the lobby: People take a ticket and wait for their number to light up on a call panel...

...Given the rigidity of France's labor structures, that is unlikely to dent unemployment significantly, even if Jospin does not let public spending get out of hand...

...at the end of the 16th century Henry IY a generous King with a hearty appetite, asked Sully, the Chancellor, to ensure that all his subjects ate meat at least once a week...

...The anger, however, is still there, as are the problems posed by 3.1 million unemployed (12.4 per cent of the labor force, barely 0.1 per cent less than a year ago...

...Suddenly, in those big soulless lobbies, there were Christmas trees, children and, as peopletookto sleeping on thespot, a smell of sweat and soup—in places like Marseilles, chorba, a thick soup with which Algerian Muslims break their fast at dusk during Ramadan...

...Individuals are entitled to one year of benefits for every seven years they have worked, then they move onto welfare...

...She is convinced there is a market for small, flexible businesses able to meet shifting needs in goods and services...

...On January 10, acting on the Socialist government's orders, police moved out the protesters, not always gently...

...So it came as something of a shock to all involved when the jobless demanding a Christmas bonus occupied agencies throughout the country in mid-December...

...During the second half of 1997, exports continued to do well, domestic consumption timidly picked up, and Jospin seemed determined to try and keep the public deficit around 3 per cent of GDP...

...Juvenile delinquency has risen dramatically in the past two years, and increasingly involves minors who, seeing the aimless lives of their elders, feel trapped in a nowhere-to-go existence...

...One-third have been out of work for a year or more...

...The president of their Confederation, Jean Gandois, resigned in October after he discovered that Aubry intended to push her bill through Parliament whatever the outcome of talks she was holding with him and trade union leaders...

...The main exception is Nicole Notât, pragmatic— and consequently much-contested—leader of the Social Democratic Workers Confederation...

...Participants in a rural "barter" association that enabled people on welfare and the dole to renovate their homes and exchange services were taken to court in early January by the building federation, and they were found guilty of illegal competition...

...One that I visited was situated on the outskirts of a small but sprawling town with no public transportation...

...In their view, it would make French firms less competitive on world markets and could drive those operating on narrow margins out of business...

...Even so, being jobless here is perhaps less devastating than elsewhere...

...The staff is tucked away out of sight...

...Juppé was faced with big, popular strikes in December 1995 when he tackled the Social Security deficit...

...If adopted, the 3 5-hour law will replace legislation passed in 1996 allowing companies to work out agreements tailored to their specific needs: some 20,000 jobs have thus been created— or saved—but they entailed a partial loss of pay in return for shorter hours...

...Janice Valls-Russell writes about French and Spanish affairs for the NL...

...Conversely, ministers and technocrats cannot shake off the habit of trying to regulate everything in sight...

...But the party is over...

...Finance Minister Dominique StraussKahn prefers to bet on an economic upturn...

...His jobs program for the young, budgeted at $816.5 million over five years, is already stretching state finances —and he is underpressure to spend more, mainly from his Communist and Green allies...

...Moonlighters are similarly hounded by employers' federations and by the Social Security system, whose concern is being cheated of health or pension contributions...

...They fear that if unemployment continues to rise, the whole benefits system will cave in: In 1998 it is expected to chalk up almost a $230 million deficit for the second year running...

...The underground economy and selfhelp arrangements also make unemployment more bearable...

...But these initiatives are discouraged...

...Besides free health coverage and a proliferation of allowances of all kinds—for single-parent households, for those unable to pay their rent—there are school grants, free school meals and emergency handouts...

...Instead, the National Assembly is about to start debating a bill that would reduce the workweek from 39 to 35 hours by 2000 without loss of pay...

...In mid-January, brushing aside the collapse of Asian stock markets, StraussKahn was predicting a 3 per cent growth of France's GDP for 1998...

...His successor, Ernest-Antoine Seillière, will lobby against it unless it is coupled to flexibility...

...The discrimination, plus the fact that many of the last are offspring of now unemployed parents encouraged to emigrate to France in the 1960s and '70s to work in the automobile and building industries, partly accounts for the unrest in some urban areas...

...Indeed, since the mid- 1980s when unemployment reached the 2 million mark, helping those made redundant has had priority over trying to bring about an economic upturn that would get some people back on payrolls...

...Quite a few economists agree...

...The president of a nonprofit organization supported by banks, private firms and public money, which has already launched 5,000 such enterprises, believes that if the paperwork were simplified and the tax and Social Security burden eased, up to 200,000 new jobs a year could be created...

...Thus someone adept at knocking on the right doors can scrape together enough to get by—certainly as much as the minimum wage (around $815 a month...

...On the contrary, social tension is likely to worsen as discontent spills over onto the streets, with corporatist demands supported by a public opinion that is disillusioned with its leaders but still wants an all-providing state...

...Two years later the disgruntled unemployed received the sympathy of 80 per cent of the population, prompted largely by a thiscould-happen-to-us-too feeling...

...France has long been used to a centralized, paternalistic state...

...In the days that followed there were marches and sporadic raids on public buildings, but they petered out after Prime Minister Lionel Jospin promised $ 1 63 million in emergency aid...

...Estimates of the number of jobs that might be created under the new law range from 400,000 to 700,000 over three years...

...Members of this group, mostly in their late 40s or early 50s and dependent on welfare, have been told they are unlikely ever to hold ajob again...

...The state is counted on to come up with the right solutions and, failing that, to take care of everyone...

...Job seekers also obtained free transportation in Paris and other large cities...

...The resignation of those in the dole queue is matched by the bored routine of officials behind their computers...

...Trade union leaders expect to have a say in all labor and economic decisions, even though they represent less than 10 per cent of workers and have come up with few new ideas since the 1930s...

...So long as voters demand remedies to come from the top yet resist the ones they do not like, and so long as those at the top believe they alone know what is best for the country, the employment situation is not going to improve...

...To cope with the situation, the government has promised to create 350,000 public sector j obs for young people by 2001...

...A public fund set up some years back to help the unemployed finance viable projects was abolished a few months ago as an economy measure...

...The gap between rich and poor has deepened inFrance, too, withhouseholds at the bottom of the social ladder poorer than they were a decade ago...

...They also use the jobless sent to them on state-financed training schemes as a form of cheap, expendable labor...

...Without contesting the need to maintain decent welfare services, they advocate targeting the distribution of aid more carefully, either to lessen the burden on payrolls or to free money to help finance back-to-work projects...