2023-10-12 05:30:07
IYou have to know how to spot a radical political turning point when it has taken place. Now is the time, with the adoption of the so-called “full employment” law on October 10. It carries a double promise of severity and austerity. On the one hand, the law increases discrimination against poor people by stigmatizing them as lazy (this is the discourse of the classic right and Macronists, such as MP Karl Olive). This is actually its main political goal.
The means of social and professional integration announced are in fact not deployed in return for the radical increase in sanctions and punishments of another age. On the other hand, the government is deploying more or less discreet cuts in all social spending. This law is fraught with devastating effects, much greater than those of the brutal economy on housing benefits which increased poverty in France from the first Macron five-year term (reduction of 5 euros, then reform of the calculation).
The expected social regression is unprecedented in decades, at a time when the effects of the unemployment insurance reform have been affecting more and more insured people since August 2023. Thirty-five years ago, in 1988, a major turning point in social protection was the innovation of the RMI [revenu minimum d’insertion]. This united republican integration project was supported by a unanimous Parliament and opposed British punitive policy, from which French President Emmanuel Macron had also distanced himself during his first plan against poverty, in 2018, with the help from his Secretary of State Olivier Noblecourt.
Young people and holders of minimum social benefits
Certainly, the ideology of budget cuts is well anchored in the president. The essence of the law, already passed in July in the Senate, lies in its flagship provision, the “fifteen hours of weekly activities”, borrowed from Valérie Pécresse; it is about saving by writing off beneficiaries.
In the absence of funding for training needs and integration assistance, which the departments do not have (as indicated in the report of the Court of Auditors of January 2022), which remains highlighted, at purposes of political communication, these are sanctions, and compulsory registration with Pôle emploi, renamed France Travail.
Two heterogeneous populations are thus artificially transformed into “job seekers”: young people and those receiving minimum social benefits, added to traditional job seekers. Where will employment advisors and social workers find the millions of “hours of weekly activities” without funding other than the handful of billions planned with the establishment of France Travail? Nobody knows. The minister, when questioned, did not respond.
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