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Le grand mensonge: L'emploi est mort. Vive I'activitè
Futures,
Vol. 27, No. 5, pp. 579-582, 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain 0016.3287/95 $10.00 + 0.00
BOOK REVIEWS
Time to break the learning-work-retirement sequence
Jacques Richardson Le grand mensonge: L’emploi est mort. Vive I’activitC (The Big lie That Work is Dead-On With Activity!) Michel Godet Paris, Editions Fixot, 1994, 304 pages, Ff 109
Michel Godet is professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers (CNAM), where he occupies the chair in future and a prolific comindustrial strategy, mentator on future strategies. CNAM is one of France’s top engineering schools (it celebrated its bicentenary in 1994), so it is more than fitting that one of its faculty should publish this treatise on the reasons for the country’s continuing unemployment among both the technically qualified and those less so. The number of France’s unemployed climbed from 400 000 in 1972 to more than 3.3 million today (the highest the largest industrialized rate among economies), yet its GDP grew by more than 60% between 1975 and 1995. ‘The wealth of the French has never been so great’, Godet reminds the reader. So what is the problem? Who is lying to whom, the author asks; why, and for how much longer? Godet puts the blame partly on his country’s technocratic establishment, the graduates of the grandes &o/e+ mainly Polytechnique and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration. He calls the The author may be contacted at Cidex 400, 91410 Authon la Plaine, France (Tel/fax: +33 1 45 67 58 95).
conspiracy to pass same-family access to the specialized, university-level schools trading’: un nothing less than ‘insider v&itable d6lit d’initiP. More than 40% of the students admitted, furthermore, are sons and daughters of faculty, whether these are of the political left or right, so that the system reproduces itself within a closed loop. The graduates become, inevitably, the senior servants of government, industry and often of the specialized academia: democracy’s ‘nobility’. (page 16) Part of the fault lies also in the ‘diplomania’ that has seized France, especially since the passing of a law in 1989 that 80% of secondary-school leavers should pass the bacca/aur&t or A-level examinations. What France needs instead of 18-year-olds heavily schooled in mathematics and the classics, insists Godet, is students better equipped to staff an increasingly service-centred economy. Today, the author claims, graduates are neglecting 1 million jobs available in healthcare, information technology, technical maintenance, waste management, plant security, and the secretarial and cleaning trades. While it is true that automation and tightened management have had serious effects in various sectors, Godet also emphasizes that improved rates of productivity have benefited France’s economy. Since the 1980s these rates have been: 40% in aluminium (Pechiney), 67% in glass (Saint-Gobain), and 50% in automobiles (PSA Peugeot-Citroen). Since 1830 1 manhour of labour has grown 25 times in
579
Book reviews
TABLE 1. WORKING HOURS PER YEAR IN SELECTED INDUSTRIAL NATIONS, 1992 Netherlands
f 1400*
Germany
1665
Great Britain
1762
France
1771**
United States
1912
Japan
2040
l
Explained in part by considerable
part-time
employment. ** Hotel and restaurant workers, lorry drivers work - 100 hours more; workers in public utilities and insurance work - 100 hours less. productivity and-if the working week is reduced to 37 hours by 1997-as many as 700000 new jobs can be created (reducing current unemployment by perhaps 20%). Polls show that French workers would take a pay cut of 10% in exchange for comparable time off, while in Germany 67% of workers polled preferred to vote for longer working hours ‘to get us out of the economic crisis’. The author thus develops his thesis, ‘It isn’t that man wants to work less; he wants to be active, but in different ways’. (page 126) Seizing on this, the French government has initiated various schemes since the late 1980s to co-finance the employment or re-employment of workers-mainly by easing the ‘social charges’ or costs of social security (mainly health and unemployment insurance) that employers are required to contribute. These charges-seen by most labour unions as inalienable rights-typically add about 50% to employee compensation. They help to explain, too, why France has 40% of long-term unemployed against 6% in the USA. Another trend gaining ground is the split job: two persons sharing the same employment, especially popular with working mothers. Codet believes that special attention must now be paid to: l
580
youths who are failures by exclusion from the learning process (students who fail);
the handicapped; rationalizing unemployment compensation and appropriate minimum wages; tax reform; coherence in differentiating by age and sex; clamping down on sloth, waste and fraud; and coherence in employment/unemployment regarding immigrants. Codet’s analysis until this point sounds as though it applies only to the French scene, but readers in many other countries will immediately see its applicability at home. The author envisages three critical approaches to the rectification of unemployment, wherever it occurs. He calls these (pages 187-253): Improving the Effectiveness and Responsibility of Social Protection (rationalizing the revenue and outlay of the social security system in terms of citizens’ rights); New Ways of State Excellence (modernizing, focusing and sharpening how government works, especially in the sphere of welfare services); and Education that Encourages Competition (rethinking school certificates and diplomas, making apprenticeship ‘pay’ both the employer and those employed; honing the spirit of competition at work. (There are five vocational trainees in Germany for every one in France.) The future holds growing promise, however, even beyond employment/work. Hobbies, culture and sports, travel and continuing education are among these interests. We need, says Godet, ‘to break the sequential rhythm of learning-workretirement by proposing flexible and alternating schedules’. (page 288) ‘By 2015 the dominant model will no longer be work; more than two-thirds of the French will be doing other things, keeping themselves busy otherwise, no longer working in order to live nor living to work. Machines and productivity do not create unemployment, they free mankind from the work constraint. Another society is possible ‘. (page 294)
Vol. 27, No. 5, pp. 579-582, 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain 0016.3287/95 $10.00 + 0.00
BOOK REVIEWS
Time to break the learning-work-retirement sequence
Jacques Richardson Le grand mensonge: L’emploi est mort. Vive I’activitC (The Big lie That Work is Dead-On With Activity!) Michel Godet Paris, Editions Fixot, 1994, 304 pages, Ff 109
Michel Godet is professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers (CNAM), where he occupies the chair in future and a prolific comindustrial strategy, mentator on future strategies. CNAM is one of France’s top engineering schools (it celebrated its bicentenary in 1994), so it is more than fitting that one of its faculty should publish this treatise on the reasons for the country’s continuing unemployment among both the technically qualified and those less so. The number of France’s unemployed climbed from 400 000 in 1972 to more than 3.3 million today (the highest the largest industrialized rate among economies), yet its GDP grew by more than 60% between 1975 and 1995. ‘The wealth of the French has never been so great’, Godet reminds the reader. So what is the problem? Who is lying to whom, the author asks; why, and for how much longer? Godet puts the blame partly on his country’s technocratic establishment, the graduates of the grandes &o/e+ mainly Polytechnique and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration. He calls the The author may be contacted at Cidex 400, 91410 Authon la Plaine, France (Tel/fax: +33 1 45 67 58 95).
conspiracy to pass same-family access to the specialized, university-level schools trading’: un nothing less than ‘insider v&itable d6lit d’initiP. More than 40% of the students admitted, furthermore, are sons and daughters of faculty, whether these are of the political left or right, so that the system reproduces itself within a closed loop. The graduates become, inevitably, the senior servants of government, industry and often of the specialized academia: democracy’s ‘nobility’. (page 16) Part of the fault lies also in the ‘diplomania’ that has seized France, especially since the passing of a law in 1989 that 80% of secondary-school leavers should pass the bacca/aur&t or A-level examinations. What France needs instead of 18-year-olds heavily schooled in mathematics and the classics, insists Godet, is students better equipped to staff an increasingly service-centred economy. Today, the author claims, graduates are neglecting 1 million jobs available in healthcare, information technology, technical maintenance, waste management, plant security, and the secretarial and cleaning trades. While it is true that automation and tightened management have had serious effects in various sectors, Godet also emphasizes that improved rates of productivity have benefited France’s economy. Since the 1980s these rates have been: 40% in aluminium (Pechiney), 67% in glass (Saint-Gobain), and 50% in automobiles (PSA Peugeot-Citroen). Since 1830 1 manhour of labour has grown 25 times in
579
Book reviews
TABLE 1. WORKING HOURS PER YEAR IN SELECTED INDUSTRIAL NATIONS, 1992 Netherlands
f 1400*
Germany
1665
Great Britain
1762
France
1771**
United States
1912
Japan
2040
l
Explained in part by considerable
part-time
employment. ** Hotel and restaurant workers, lorry drivers work - 100 hours more; workers in public utilities and insurance work - 100 hours less. productivity and-if the working week is reduced to 37 hours by 1997-as many as 700000 new jobs can be created (reducing current unemployment by perhaps 20%). Polls show that French workers would take a pay cut of 10% in exchange for comparable time off, while in Germany 67% of workers polled preferred to vote for longer working hours ‘to get us out of the economic crisis’. The author thus develops his thesis, ‘It isn’t that man wants to work less; he wants to be active, but in different ways’. (page 126) Seizing on this, the French government has initiated various schemes since the late 1980s to co-finance the employment or re-employment of workers-mainly by easing the ‘social charges’ or costs of social security (mainly health and unemployment insurance) that employers are required to contribute. These charges-seen by most labour unions as inalienable rights-typically add about 50% to employee compensation. They help to explain, too, why France has 40% of long-term unemployed against 6% in the USA. Another trend gaining ground is the split job: two persons sharing the same employment, especially popular with working mothers. Codet believes that special attention must now be paid to: l
580
youths who are failures by exclusion from the learning process (students who fail);
the handicapped; rationalizing unemployment compensation and appropriate minimum wages; tax reform; coherence in differentiating by age and sex; clamping down on sloth, waste and fraud; and coherence in employment/unemployment regarding immigrants. Codet’s analysis until this point sounds as though it applies only to the French scene, but readers in many other countries will immediately see its applicability at home. The author envisages three critical approaches to the rectification of unemployment, wherever it occurs. He calls these (pages 187-253): Improving the Effectiveness and Responsibility of Social Protection (rationalizing the revenue and outlay of the social security system in terms of citizens’ rights); New Ways of State Excellence (modernizing, focusing and sharpening how government works, especially in the sphere of welfare services); and Education that Encourages Competition (rethinking school certificates and diplomas, making apprenticeship ‘pay’ both the employer and those employed; honing the spirit of competition at work. (There are five vocational trainees in Germany for every one in France.) The future holds growing promise, however, even beyond employment/work. Hobbies, culture and sports, travel and continuing education are among these interests. We need, says Godet, ‘to break the sequential rhythm of learning-workretirement by proposing flexible and alternating schedules’. (page 288) ‘By 2015 the dominant model will no longer be work; more than two-thirds of the French will be doing other things, keeping themselves busy otherwise, no longer working in order to live nor living to work. Machines and productivity do not create unemployment, they free mankind from the work constraint. Another society is possible ‘. (page 294)