NOW FOR ‘POSITIVE DISCRIMINATION’ EQUALITY ON SHOP FLOOR
A new project aims to overcome prejudice and empower marginalised communities by giving them the chance to prove their worth in the formal economy
WILLIAM HOROBIN
SAID Argoug struggled for years to get a stable job, but doors kept closing. Not because he lacked skills, he says, but because he lived in a gritty urban area in northern France and had an Arab-sounding name.
“I remember when I first tried to get jobs with temping agencies,” Argoug, 26, said in the offices of his new employer, La Mobilery, a small web and app developer near Roubaix. “When they knew I came from Roubaix, I got no work.”
His job is part of a subsidised programme President Emmanuel Macron’s government is testing to combat employment discrimination. People from suburbs like Argoug’s are only a third as likely to find work as those from wealthier neighbourhoods, the Labour Ministry says.
It’s France’s boldest attempt yet at affirmative action in a country that has struggled to integrate waves of immigration in the post-war era.
Millions of people of North African background, many of them citizens, live in suburbs of hastily constructed tower blocks scattered around cities across the country. Known as banlieues, they are often isolated from transport connections. Their residents suffer from factory closures, poor educational achievement and decrepit public services.
While affirmative action is common in the US, in France it’s known as “positive discrimination” and viewed with suspicion. Critics, especially from the far right, say perceived special treatment poses a threat to the central values of the country: liberty, equality and fraternity.
During his 2017 election campaign, Macron sparked an angry reaction when he espoused it as one solution for the high-unemployment banlieues.
Marine Le Pen, his rival in the run-off vote, said at the time it was “contrary to the French Republic.”
Yet it’s hard to climb the ladder in France. It would take six generations for those born in low-income families to approach the mean income, compared with an average of 4.5 years across the 34 OECD nations.
Unemployment, especially among immigrants, is higher in France’s suburbs than in surrounding urban areas, according to the National Observatory of Urban Policy.
The programme is part of Macron’s broader attempt to bring down unemployment by shaking up the labour market. The gap between the haves and have-nots and the perception that the president doesn’t care has cost him during the “yellow vest” protests roiling Paris and other cities.
Work contracts like Argoug’s qualify for subsidies, based simply on his home address. La Mobilery will receive 5000 euros a year for the first three years he works there.
The government is testing the plan in the area around Lille, which encompasses Roubaix, and some suburbs of Marseille and Paris. If successful, it could be rolled out nationwide at the end of this year.
In Lille, past employment policies were ineffective in aiding the underprivileged because they offered the same services and support irrespective of need, said Vincent Huet, director of home-help association Amed, which is also hiring under the new programme.
“Fair solutions are needed,” he said. According to a 2016 study by labour statistics office Dares, employers are more likely to respond to job applications from candidates with French-sounding names, such as Aurelie or Julien, than those with North African names, such as Djamila and Faycal.
To escape those attitudes, Argoug used to cross the border to Belgium to take up short-term work. “As long as you’re motivated, they don’t look at your name,” he said.
He grew up in Roubaix, where he went into vocational training to become an engineering assistant. But he didn’t find any work in that area and spent several years doing temporary work in factories, restaurants and elsewhere before the training programme at La Mobilery in nearby Tourcoing.
It’s too soon to say whether Macron’s trial will succeed on a larger scale. Bruno Ducoudre, an economist at French research centre OFCE warned that public money could be wasted.
Businesses might have recruited people irrespective of the bonuses and France’s banlieues need broader investment in transport and health care, he said.
In Lille, the authorities are already calling it a success after more than 1000 contracts were signed in the first nine months.
More people were moving in and out of the deprived areas for work, a trend that helps break down barriers and increase social mobility, said Nadine Crinier, regional director of an employment bureau.
In September, Fatima Kethiri began working at the Pirates Paradise restaurant, on the outskirts of Tourcoing, on a longterm contract with good benefits.
“It was a permanent contract immediately,” said 50-year-old Kethiri, who spent years in part-time and temporary catering jobs. “That’s rare around here.”
The restaurant’s proximity to the economically troubled area benefited owner Jerome Descamps when he needed to find 70 staff to set it up in September. Four of the new recruits, including Kethiri, will earn him cash bonuses, enabling him to take on extra workers, he said.
In addition to the subsidies, Descamps says those he has hired and trained are better motivated and prepared to get involved. At the restaurant, replicas of pirate ships and rustic taverns surround a vast dining area where “waiter-actors” dash between tables, calling in orders on Bluetooth headsets.
“It’s not rocket science – we’re not doctors,” Descamps said. “Above all we are looking for people with personality.”
At La Mobilery, Argoug’s employers tell a similar story. To hire a developer usually requires 100 phone calls, and young skilled workers tend not to stay long, said customer relations director Fabrice Bellotti.
Instead, La Mobilery asked the employment office to find job seekers who could be trained by the company. The owner said he didn’t realise there was a cash bonus, but the firm was keen to sign more people from the programme.
“People who have a life story create a better link with the company, that lasts longer,” Bellotti said. |