Aux armes etcetera
power to the people
In 1975 after the first oil crisis, France discovered for the first time, mass unemployment.
In October of that year, the threshold of 1 million unemployed was surpassed; five years earlier, only 250 000 people were signing on.
That was the start of a crisis that amplified over the next ten years.
The youngest generations were the first to suffer : a reduction in income and a longer wait to find a stable job ... when older people stopped working after thirty years and then went into a nice peaceful retirement, they saw their standard of living increasing.
For people under thirty and their successers, it was the start of a horror movie for which le contrat première embauche (CPE) is now paying the price, apearing as THE step too far.
Young people percieve it, due to the précarité that it creates, as the confirmation - or even as the officialisation of - a creeping uneasiness that has existed for the last thirty years.
Succesive governements - to the left and to the right alike - have never been able to correct things even after the storm warning of 1975. All of their decisions have revolved around the same axis : maintaining the 30 to 50 year olds in employment, even if it results in excluding the youngest and the oldest.
For the over 55's; age metering leads to early retirement. For the 'juniors'; the extension of their studies and the ineumerable 'dispositifs' which are supposed to help them in their transition to employment.
These 'dispositifs' have only helped 35% to 40% of active young people, aged 26 and under, since the middle of the '90s. They are lengthening the already long waiting line to the gates of employment - all of which depends on their studies and the grades obtained.
Those with the best diplomas are the first served; but only when there is a significant economic upturn - as was the case at the end of the eighties and the nineties.
However, those with lower levels of attainment are stigmatised by their lack of qualifications. All of this due to french employers who have become devotees of the modernisation du système productif français.
Of students who finished their education in 1993, at the height of the crisis, only 40% were able to find employment over the following year. In 2000, the figure was 60% - and this whilst the internet boom was dynamising the French economy.
Elsewhere, companies, encouraged by fashionable political policies aimed at reducing work costs and therefore inciting them to create more jobs, multiplied questionable hiring prectices: contrat à durée déterminée (CDD), internships, training programs ... supposedly offering young people experience to enable them to find stable employment afterwards - which in most cases worked very well.
These forms of empoyment then became a mode of adjustment of the workforce during difficult economic periods. A 'drug' that employers just couldn't kick - even during the good years.
So it was, in 2000, that only 50% school leavers found full time employment the following year. In 1984, it was 75%.
Starting a career late in life, the fragilisation of opportunites for (re)training, tainted with periods of unemployment and precarious contracts ... all of these things have had a direct effect on living standards and have damaged morale.
Today, the difference in renumeration between the forty and thirty somethings is a staggering 40% !
The level of personal savings of the thirty somethings has plummeted by 50% (from 18% to 9%) between 1995 and 2001.
For the forty somethings; from 12% to 18%.
For the fifty somethings; from 19% to 26%.
Les droits sociaux; access to credit, housing - all of which were traditionally linked to pay and benefits are now becoming available later and later in life.
Sociologists now observe what they term as 'the lengthening of adolecsence', in other words, a prolongation of situations, attitudes and behaviour leading to a greater dependance on parents - A lack of autonomy that reinforces social inegalities between young people, as well as the inegalities of diplomas and the income of their parents.
Above all, this prolonged dependance underscores once more the effects of poverty created by the lack of employment and access to social rights. The French are percieving, for the first time in peace time, that the fate of their children could be worse than their own.
The social 'elevator' has broken down : in 2002, if 22 % of French people aged between 30 and 35 had attained a social category higher than their parents, 17 % had, however, known a "relegation", against respectively, 32 % and 10 % for French people aged between 50 and 54.
Precariousness could be considered as a step on the way to a durable and succesful insertion into society. This is the case for many young people, of which 70 % find stable employment in the three years after they leave the education system.
Today, 87% of French people in activity have a full time job: a figure that we shouldn't forget at a time when adults present precariousness as a 'modern' form of employment.
But this precariousness is also a harbinger of a generalised social regression if the terrible consequences on the standard of living and status of those who are subjected to it are not at least redressed, and at best compensated by new social rights.
In 1975 after the first oil crisis, France discovered for the first time, mass unemployment.
In October of that year, the threshold of 1 million unemployed was surpassed; five years earlier, only 250 000 people were signing on.
That was the start of a crisis that amplified over the next ten years.
The youngest generations were the first to suffer : a reduction in income and a longer wait to find a stable job ... when older people stopped working after thirty years and then went into a nice peaceful retirement, they saw their standard of living increasing.
For people under thirty and their successers, it was the start of a horror movie for which le contrat première embauche (CPE) is now paying the price, apearing as THE step too far.
Young people percieve it, due to the précarité that it creates, as the confirmation - or even as the officialisation of - a creeping uneasiness that has existed for the last thirty years.
Succesive governements - to the left and to the right alike - have never been able to correct things even after the storm warning of 1975. All of their decisions have revolved around the same axis : maintaining the 30 to 50 year olds in employment, even if it results in excluding the youngest and the oldest.
For the over 55's; age metering leads to early retirement. For the 'juniors'; the extension of their studies and the ineumerable 'dispositifs' which are supposed to help them in their transition to employment.
These 'dispositifs' have only helped 35% to 40% of active young people, aged 26 and under, since the middle of the '90s. They are lengthening the already long waiting line to the gates of employment - all of which depends on their studies and the grades obtained.
Those with the best diplomas are the first served; but only when there is a significant economic upturn - as was the case at the end of the eighties and the nineties.
However, those with lower levels of attainment are stigmatised by their lack of qualifications. All of this due to french employers who have become devotees of the modernisation du système productif français.
Of students who finished their education in 1993, at the height of the crisis, only 40% were able to find employment over the following year. In 2000, the figure was 60% - and this whilst the internet boom was dynamising the French economy.
Elsewhere, companies, encouraged by fashionable political policies aimed at reducing work costs and therefore inciting them to create more jobs, multiplied questionable hiring prectices: contrat à durée déterminée (CDD), internships, training programs ... supposedly offering young people experience to enable them to find stable employment afterwards - which in most cases worked very well.
These forms of empoyment then became a mode of adjustment of the workforce during difficult economic periods. A 'drug' that employers just couldn't kick - even during the good years.
So it was, in 2000, that only 50% school leavers found full time employment the following year. In 1984, it was 75%.
Starting a career late in life, the fragilisation of opportunites for (re)training, tainted with periods of unemployment and precarious contracts ... all of these things have had a direct effect on living standards and have damaged morale.
Today, the difference in renumeration between the forty and thirty somethings is a staggering 40% !
The level of personal savings of the thirty somethings has plummeted by 50% (from 18% to 9%) between 1995 and 2001.
For the forty somethings; from 12% to 18%.
For the fifty somethings; from 19% to 26%.
Les droits sociaux; access to credit, housing - all of which were traditionally linked to pay and benefits are now becoming available later and later in life.
Sociologists now observe what they term as 'the lengthening of adolecsence', in other words, a prolongation of situations, attitudes and behaviour leading to a greater dependance on parents - A lack of autonomy that reinforces social inegalities between young people, as well as the inegalities of diplomas and the income of their parents.
Above all, this prolonged dependance underscores once more the effects of poverty created by the lack of employment and access to social rights. The French are percieving, for the first time in peace time, that the fate of their children could be worse than their own.
The social 'elevator' has broken down : in 2002, if 22 % of French people aged between 30 and 35 had attained a social category higher than their parents, 17 % had, however, known a "relegation", against respectively, 32 % and 10 % for French people aged between 50 and 54.
Precariousness could be considered as a step on the way to a durable and succesful insertion into society. This is the case for many young people, of which 70 % find stable employment in the three years after they leave the education system.
Today, 87% of French people in activity have a full time job: a figure that we shouldn't forget at a time when adults present precariousness as a 'modern' form of employment.
But this precariousness is also a harbinger of a generalised social regression if the terrible consequences on the standard of living and status of those who are subjected to it are not at least redressed, and at best compensated by new social rights.
posted by Damiel | 8:57 PM
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