France: state of emergency escalates attacks on the rights of youth and workers

Many commentators have noted the bitter irony contained in the fact that the legal framework for the state of emergency, the law of April 3, 1955, was enacted as part of French imperialism’s attempt to crush the legitimate aspirations of the Algerian people for national liberation from colonial rule. The reactivation of this law, 50 years later in metropolitan France, is an insult to the children and grandchildren and relatives of those exploited, brutalised, tortured and killed by the colonial regime during Algeria’s war of national liberation. Many now live in France’s council estates, ghettos of poverty, where the youth revolt and its repression have taken place.

Similarly, the 1955 law is being used to crush the aspirations of the youth for access to high-quality education and the perspective of decent secure jobs with all the rights and life opportunities that go with them.

Here is where the second insult was levelled against the youth, more hurtful in some ways than all of Sarkozy’s invective about “scum” and “gangrene.” Villepin, in his genteel and aristocratic tones, having explained the implications and the application of the state of emergency, then laid out his social programme, which he claims is designed to alleviate the injustice, discrimination, alienation and sense of abandonment of the youth on the suburban council estates.

He proposed apprenticeships at 14 for pupils in difficulty, thus lowering compulsory education by two years. Gérard Aschiéri, general secretary of the principal trade union federation in education, the FSU (Federation of Unified Trade Unions), commented: “I’m horrified. It’s appalling. Far from improving the situation, this is going to push the youth even further into job insecurity, distance them from all possibility of real qualifications and jobs.... The government wants to accentuate social selection and condemn definitively to exclusion the youth who are most in difficulty.”

Another measure will increase to 100,000—from the present pitiful 30,000—the number of grants “for the deserving”—au mérite. The minuscule scope of this proposal is clear when one considers that nearly 5 million people live in the suburban estates for the poor. The success of the “deserving” few will not solve the problems of the many. On the same scale is the proposal to establish 10 extra boarding residences “of educational achievement for the most promising and motivated pupils.”

Villepin has pledged that every person under 25, whether seeking a job or not, living in one of the 750 “sensitive zones” will receive an “in-depth interview” at an unemployment office and “a specific solution” will be offered to them in three months (training, work experience, contracts). He made no proposal to drop legislation penalising those who do not accept the low-wage jobs on offer by withdrawing their welfare benefits.

Another insult is the plan to create 5,000 posts for “pedagogical assistants” or auxiliaries. These would not be trained teachers but students who would, for minimal wages, conditions and rights, “help pupils with learning difficulties.” Villepin announced no plan to stop the reduction in teaching posts that has been continuing for three years nor the suppression of the “surveillants.” These are students who, since the 1930s, have been able to pay their way through university—with a proper contract, seven-year job security, holiday and sick-leave rights and earned seniority—by helping with organisational tasks in secondary schools.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/fran-n10.shtml