But the defeats of the past still weigh heavy. In the area of employment, all struggles have a defensive character — struggles against layoffs, such as at Ciotat and Sud Marine in the Marseilles region, and the struggle against the elimination of positions at the post office. As for the trade union movement, it has not overcome its profound weakness and division. France is probably the worst off in Europe, with a unionisation rate of somewhere between 5% and 10% of the salaried population (see box opposite).
It is in this context that a number of trade unionists, organised within the "Collectif" network, initiated "Act Against Unemployment!" (AC). The creation of AC was based on the observation that the trade union movement has neither the strength nor the credibility to be the sole force behind a campaign against unemployment and for job creation. This is unlike the situation in Germany in the 1980s, when IG Metall was able to organise an exemplary mobilisation around the reduction of the work week.
AC plans to address the problem in the political arena, by taking the campaign to the population as a whole. The idea is to bring together trade unionists, social movement activists — particularly organisations of the unemployed (see box p. 28) — intellectuals and all those in favour of building a long-term mobilisation behind the following idea: "the situation has become intolerable; we have to change priorities and implement radical measures to overturn current tendencies."
From the beginning, AC has assembled a wide range of forces. In addition to the trade unions and organisations of the unempoyed, the Human Rights League (LDH), the trade union federation of families (of Christian inspiration) and a number of other community organisations have joined.
The massive reduction of the work week is the first goal of the campaign. The length of the work week has regularly decreased in France, except from 1982 onwards. All studies have shown that the reduction of the work week is an indispensable condition for job creation. Legislating a 35-hour work week would create 1 to 1.5 million jobs.
To rely solely on a future economic upturn — as does the Force Ouvrière (FO) confederation - is to sow tremendous illusions. For massive job creation, there would have to be a growth rate of between 5% and 10%, something which is out of the question in a country like France today.
### Redistribution
The financing of this reduction of the work week would take place through a redistribution of wealth. The initial AC call - signed by more than 100 trade unionists, academics and social movement representatives — points in this direction.
During the first national gathering of AC on 15-16 January, the more than 600 participants adopted a plan to demand a series of emergency measures.
These measures call for a moratorium on all layoffs until the implementation of legislation for a 35-hour work week. They call on the State to set an example by putting a halt to the eliminations of jobs in administration, public services and nationalised enterprises.
Other measures put forward include an increase in unemployment insurance and the minimum wage (RMI), and defense of the rights of the unemployed to housing, health care and free public transit.
Over the long term, AC's goal is to rebuild solidarity based on the joint mobilisation of working people, the unemployed and those hovering between the two categories.
For this campaign to get anywhere there has to be a certain relationship of forces on the national level. AC is therefore organising a national march across France in April and May. There will probably be five marches that will go through as many of the major population centres as possible, and converge on Paris on 29 May.
This initiative, which should have a tremendous impact across the country, will provide an opportunity to improve the relationship of forces and advance toward the campaign's objectives. *
A divided movement THE French trade union movement is made up of three large confederations. The CGT, run primarily by activists from the French Communist Party (PCF), remains the main confederation, in trade union electoral terms, but primarily in activist terms, even though its influence has been declining over the last few decades. The CFDT comes second to the CGT in trade union electoral terms, and originates in Christian trade unionism. Its "deconfessionalisation" dates from 1964. This confederation took up the themes of May 1968 throughout the 1970s, but made a right tum in the 1980s, making it the conciliatory force of the trade union movement. The evolution of the CFDT generated a crisis which continues to this day, and has seen the post office and health sectors (SUD and CRC) bureaucratically repressed and split off. There is a structured left-wing opposition which represents about one third of the confederation. The FO is a confederation influenced by social democracy, and was created on the basis of a split from the CGT in 1947. While "reformist", the FO has taken a more militant tum of late. But it remains isolated, as it refuses to work with both the CGT and CFDT leaderships. In addition to these three confederations, there are two smaller ones: the CFTC, a very inactive Christian confederation, and the CGC, which organises administrative employees. There are also autonomous and independent trade unions. First, thre is the FSU, the strongest in the education sector with more than 40% of unionised workers. This federation originates in the united teachers' federation, the FEN, which is dominated by a social democratic current that expelled the trade unions and tendencies supported by activists close to the PCF and far-left groups. The FSU is now twice the size of the FEN. There are also more limited forces around the "group of ten" ", which includes those excluded from the CFDT (SUD, CRC, and so on) and those trade unions, like the FEN, that opposed the 1947 split: SNUI in the department of taxation, SNJ among joumalists, and so forth. There is a network around the magazine "Collectif", which includes activists from the CFDT opposition, the group of ten, the FU and various CGT oppositionists. O
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Jobless and organised AT the onset of the crisis in the 1970s, trade union confederations - particularly the CGT and the CFDT - tried to organise the unemployed into "committees of the unemployed" linked to their confederation. These initiatives, which met with some success, were wound up in the 1980s for two main reasons. First, as a result of the lack of motivation from the confederations, which supported the Socialist Party (PS) government at the time. Second, due to a rise in structural unemployment, which distanced the employed from the unemployed. Today, more than one million unemploved have been so for more than
Action. solidaritv and debate THE following text is the initial draft of the appeal put out by the "Act Against Unemployment" (AC) campaign. It has served as a platform for the founding of a broad movement which aims to strengthen solidarity between working people and the unemployed, to create a space for thoroughgoing debate around the question of work, and to struggle for an immediate reduction in the length of the work week. DOCUMENT ployed have been so for more than one year; trade unionism does not have much meaning for them, no more than it does for youth in unstable situations who see trade unionism as something institutionalised and outdated Organisations of the unemployed have thus sprung up over the last few years. First, there was the "union of the unemployed", which gave rise to today's National Movement of the Unemployed and Unstable Workers (MNCP). The MNCP is part of AC and the "Sharing" movement, organised by the founder of the union of the unemployed, Maurice Pagat. The "Sharing" movement puts forwards demands for the sharing of work and revenues (including workers' wages), which makes its relations with the employed rather difficult. There is also the Association for the Employment, Information and Solidarity of the Unemployed and Unstable Workers (APEIS), founded in the Paris region, usually by PCF-run municipal governments. The president of APEIS is a signatary of the AC's founding appeal. Finally, outside of Paris, there are a number of local groups which are not part of any national federation. In general, organisations of the unemployed are weak and isolated. The building of a strong national movement of the unemployed and of unstable workers, alongside the trade unions, is one of the stakes in the development of the AC campaign. When AC committees grow with a massive — even majority — participation from the unemployed, they refuse to play second fiddle to the organised trade union movement. As a result, they need the means to develop an autonomous structure. *
SIGNATARIES to this call — the unemployed, working people, trade union and social movement activists, teachers, students, youth, peasants, social workers, academics, retirees — assert their common will to meet, exchange their thoughts and experiences, and take initiatives to give rise to a broad movement which can genuinely tackle the problem of unemployment.
Global competition has had a devastating impact. However, there are firms making profits, often very significant profits. These do not go towards hiring, on the contrary. When they are not placed on the speculative market, they are invested in growing automisation efforts, which have expelled millions of men and women from the workplace and from social life.
### Technological progress
Technological progress should benefit all of humankind. Instead, it has led to social regression: anguish for youth; pressure on women to take part-time employment or to return to domestic life, thereby further devaluating their social role; the exclusion of the old and the weak, treated like so many worn out tools; the creations of layers of insecurity, people with no status and no real social rights; the exclusion of immigrants and the rise of xenophobia.
The threat of layoffs hangs more and more ominously, even over the heads of the most highly educated. And "social dumping" is growing on a European and global level.
The current division of working time and revenues creates unemployment and insecurity, and overtime. It leads to exclusion, and threatens social equilibrium and democracy itself. It restricts solidarity to the employed: those that work contribute to the social budgets meant for those without work, while other social categories are exempted from solidarity efforts. Even today, work remains a very strong social link; and unemployment is the main form of exclusion.
There is a need to continue the struggle against layoffs, and for the definitive hiring of those in an unstable position. Overtime should be restricted. Everyone should be guaranteed an adequate wage — whether employed, unemployed, welfare recipients, youth, refugee applicants, and so on.
But all this is not adequate. We can no longer tolerate the exclusion — often definitive - of working people, youth and entire families. However valuable they maybe, the many local experiences that try to address this problem directly can't beat back this rising tide of unemployment and exclusion.
For a reduction in the length of the work week. For more than a century, the struggle to work less has been one waged by working people to live a better life. Today, confronted with the acceleration of the pace of work - with the fatigue and effects on the nervous system this brings — a new stage is necessary, and can make free time, education, leisure and culture accessible to everyone. It is good sense to divvy up working hours among everyone, thereby massively reducing working hours.
This reduction has to take place in the following manner:
• without worsening the condition of working people. They have been asked to many sacrifices over the years and the living conditions for many of them are already difficult;
• without intensifying the pace of
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work. This means enacting the necessary guarantees around hours, breaks, pace, norms, and the amount of work done by each worker;
• by adapting through negotiations from sector to sector, but based on nationwide legislation that sets 35 hours as the maximum legal length of the work week;
• with concomitant hiring, to genuinely address the problem of unemployment.
Among developed countries, France ranks as one in which inequalities in revenue and holdings are among the most pronounced. The wealthiest 10% of households receive 28% of revenues and hold 54% of assets. The poorest 50% of households hold only 6% of assets!
The costs of unemployment
The rise of unemployment has led to a growth in these inequalities. For many years, in fact, it is mainly working people, retirees and job-seekers that have borne the costs of unemployment. Directly so for those who have lost their jobs and their salaries, but also for the employed through taxation and payments subtracted from their pay cheques - whether this money goes towards funding job-creation measures, to make up for exemptions accorded to businesses, or to pay for the deficit in social security.
At the same time, taxes have been progresively reduced on financial speculation, fast profits, profits and capital gains.
It is possible to finance the reduction of the work week and defend working people's purchasing power through:
• the drop in the costs of unemployment following upon the creation of jobs;
• a more just sharing out of the enormous productivity gains that have been made over the years;
• the taxation of revenues from financial speculation and other unproductive activities;
• a more just and effective use of taxes and social security contributions;
• a more just redistribution of wealth produced between labour and capital;
• initiatives for a coordinated reduction of the work week on a pan-European level;
• the establishment of a new relationship between rich and poor countries.
We commit ourselves to organise a broad public debate on all these questions. All proposals have to be heard and be debated - those that propose ways to avoid decreasing purchasing power as well as those that feel it necessary to lower the highest wages, or any other proposal concerning taxation and redistribution.
ACI
The mobilisation of working people and the unemployed for the 35-hour work week (on the way to the 30-hour work week) is an essential condition if this debate is to be as broad as possible. Another mode of production
There is a need to find another mode of production, another organisation of work that is not based on current divisions. The economy has to be revived by prioritising needs that have not yet been met: in health care, education, housing, the environment, community life, public services — all this towards an enduring form of development that respects ecosystems, nature and the rights of future generations in the North and South.
Jobs have to be created, and jobs in sectors undergoing reconversion have to be reconceived without layoffs. There is also a need to make education accessible to everyone — from the initial stages right through specialisation — and to prioritise investment in the educational system. These goals are within reach in a developed country such as our own. They can also give a boost to the idea of a social Europe.
The signataries of this call propose to help in the coordination of initiatives against unemployment, to build a broad movement with three main goals:
1. To strengthen concrete solidarity between working people and the unemployed: by recognising and supporting organisations of the unemployed, by prioritising their representation - and by helping to set up spaces for information, mutual assistance and for common activities around questions of free time and the creation of useful jobs.
2. To debate together: over basic questions raised in the fight against unemployment. How to share and organise work? How to share wealth and revenues in a more equitable fashion, in France, Europe, and the rest of the world? How to make the link between the various anti-unemployment initiatives that have been taken across Europe? How to rethink the educational system to break down segregation and develop forms which provide qualifications for all segments of the society and culture? How to rethink the place of work in society and imagine other venues for social interaction? How to open up free time to forms of solidarity - awareness, creativity, citizenship — that can at last be socially recognised?
3. To organise and act for a reduction of the work week - immediately for a basic law fixing a legal weekly limit of 35 hours, towards the 30-hour work week.
It is collective action that will unleash a new, alternative logic. For this, trade union and social movement efforts have to converge. There has to be a will to develop solidarity, so a broad social movement can bring together working people and jobseekers, women and men, French citizens and immigrants, and all those who believe that the limits of what is tolerable were crossed long ago. *
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