Students fighting the free market

Far from being revolutionary, the students demonstrating yesterday seem to be conservative: they want to preserve the benefits enjoyed by their parents.

American research underlines just how exceptional the French are in the world today. Alone among the populations of 20 countries surveyed by a team of university researchers, they oppose the free market system.

In China, top of the table compiled in the poll for Maryland University, three people in four (74 per cent) believe the market economy is the best way of securing their country's future. Americans come third after Filipinos and the British, Germans and Canadians all appear in the top 10, with approval ratios of between 65 and 73 per cent.

France, meanwhile, languishes in 20th and last place, after Mexico, Kenya and Argentina, with just 36 per cent in favour.

"I didn't know about the poll," said Nicolas, 20, a physical education student covered from head to foot in stickers expressing his hatred of the first work contract, which is at the root of the wave of protests sweeping France. The contract would allow employers to hire people under 26 but dismiss them without reason in the first two years.

"But I don't think of us as having our heads stuck in the sand. Maybe we expect the state to take better care than other countries of the rights of workers and those in difficulties."

Despite the current revolt against the contract, most French people would probably be astonished to realise how out of step their country has become with the march of time.

Most of the students are demanding the same rigid job security of their parents and grandparents. Other opinion soundings suggest that most young people want, more than anything, to become civil servants.

And employers respond by simply not hiring people. Lovely.

I was going to say the stock thing, "and that is why there are no new jobs in France", but instead of just being flip about it I decided to look a little and find out the real story on employment in France. There are net new jobs in France, a respectable number of them. Employment has grown from 21.7 million about 10 years ago to 24.3 million in the most recent year I found data for. The rate is a little over a quarter million net new jobs a year, roughly 1% employment growth.

In the US we've managed to average more like 1.5% annual employment growth. If the French could get to that figure and keep it up for 10 years, they'd halve their unemployment rate to around our own level. The government clearly sees the need to encourage that, though obviously the unions do not.

We work much harder than the French. Their jobs average 1650 hours worked per year, ours 2000, in addition to the larger portion of our population working. (And of course, a much bigger population - France is a fifth our size). And it is quite clear the employment aspirations of the typical Frenchmen are to get paid a moderate salary by an unsinkable institution for an easy job he can complete the work for by about 11 in the morning.

On a recent trip to France, it was clear to me how that happens, incidentally. The state runs merit examinations in a highly tracked educational system. The best products of that system are slotted to tenure in the civil service, with a modest stream also going to work as technocrats for the big banks and the like. When they land in the civil service positions, they find they are bureaucrats long on the bureau and short on the things to crat (rule). The bureaucracy is padded with sinecures. Jobs a smart person can do in hours are split among several smart people. Who want to knock off early or come in late, the better to read Foucault in the cafes and talk politics etc.

There is another class in France that actually works, the small business people. Shop owners, scads of them, tradesmen. They actually work, as do their families (often extended). These days quite a few of these are immigrants or 2nd generation, not the scruffy head-kickers of today's headlines.

Farmers are supported by German paid subsidies. The high bourgois live off rents (Paris real estate is astronomically expensive and deeded down through families generation after generation), incomes from the large banks and mercantile fortunes, many of them quite old. With plenty of glorified servants as employees.

So there are jobs for anybody polished enough to flatter the rich, and other jobs for anybody with the gumption to work for themselves and willing to put in the hours, and other jobs for anybody smart enough to ace exams. Unpolished, not smart, and not wanting to work one's tail off independently, however, means left to the unions - if not to crime. That's who you see on the streets.

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