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European Marches against Unemployment - News and Archives
Absender : aguiton@sud.unions.eu.org (Christophe) Org.-Empf. : marches97-info.eng@ras.eu.org Weiterleiter marches97-info.eng-request@ras.eu.org Betreff : Euronews 3 / Great Britain Datum : Mi 04.03.98, 08:02 (erhalten: 04.03.98) Groesse : 5282 Bytes ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Is it a laughing or a crying matter? Stupifying news from Great Britain:
The discovery of 500 000 unemployed! Well, not quite, because they will not be officially counted until the publication of unemployment figures in April. It still remains a fact however, that the labour government have just decided to reform their system of calculating unemployment figures which is going to have the effect of reintergrating half a million jobless that official statistics has previously eliminated. It should be noted that since 1979, when the conservatives were in power, they were past master of the art of manipulating statistics , especially for unemployment. The method of calculating unemployment figures has been modified no less than 32 times! The basic principle is still applicable now : only those on unemployment benefits are included in statistics. On that basis, unemployment in France would be 6%. A simple method and very efficient for statistics. The young who have never worked, women, people over 55 years old, would be systematically left out of such calculations. These kind of devious methods for maintaining a low rate of unemployment allowed the United Kingdom to blow its trumpet for years. But with new methods of calculations, Great Britain will jump from 1,4 million to 1,9 million for unemployed, and from 5% to about 7%.
Another little effort The British government did not revise its statistics as a light-hearted gesture. In fact, ever since the European countries came under social pressure and started talking about employment, the labour government has been under increasing pressure to adopt the same comparable statistical methods for calculating unemployment figures as used in other European member states. Countries such as France and Germany, were anxious not to appear as the bad pupils of the classroom, under the pretext that statistics should conformed more strictly to international standards. New statistics are still far from reality. However, they allow the United Kingdom to proclaim that their unemployement rate is way below that on the continent. But the true situation is to be found elsewhere. It is to be found in the precarisation of work, which the English translate as "job insecurity," or "insecurity of jobs" and the growth of the "working poor." literaly "people who are in jobs but who are poor." Those low-paid jobs with no minimum salary, are often part-time jobs or short-term contracts with out any form of employment contract The end result is a situation where workers, like the unemployed, survive on incomes that are well below the poverty threshold. In fact, the wide-spread growth of precarisation of work can be seen as another form of unemployment. The British model makes certain people on the continent dream. Flexibility is a politically correct term used in France and in many other European countries, to express the determinatin to impose a job market where the required reduction in working hours will be covered by new part-time jobs. That is how the bosses and the right would like to impose their version of the 35 hour week with reduction in salaries. It is as clear as daylight, that if a part-time worker drops out of unemployment statistics, he will still be living below the poverty threshold with regards to his income at the end of the month. However hard you struggle to live on half a SMIC (minimum legal monthly salary) in France, it is impossible to do so.
The French follow in British footsteps The latest unemployment statistics published in France, showed among other things, an increasing and worrying tendency to imitate English-style massage of unemployment statistics. In line with an infintesimal reduction in the number of registered unemployed at job centres (ANPE) there has been a noticably speculaire rise in precaire jobs (CDD), and in temporary or part-time work. In 1997, the number of people who worked more than 78 hours a month, but who were still considered to be looking for work (they wanted a full time job), increased by 34,4%. Part-time jobs now accounts for16,5% of the total private sector jobs. In one year, the number of contracts for less than a month has increased by 27%. France is well and truely on the road to "Thatcherisation" at a time when the British model is more and more questioned by the British workers. That in any case, was the meaning of votes casted for Tony Blair some time ago. But if he can fulfill people's
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Last Modified: April 15, 1998