Thank you—and goodbye

Press, 31 May 1977, Page 21

Thank you—and goodbye

France may have the answer for those countries wanting to get rid of immigrant workers in a manner more humane than just booting them out . . .

At first sight, France’s latest scheme to cut its large army of immigrant workers may look pretty callous: unemployment is climbing to alarming new heights so immigrants should do their bit for France by getting out. North Africans and Portuguese call it the poiicy of the lemon: first you squeeze the fruit, then you throw it away. But President Giscard d’Estaing’s government is tackling this nasty dilemma less nastily than that. This wave of foreign workers began splashing over the French industrial scene in the 19605. They filled the low-paid jobs in construction (two out of five workers), road-build-ing, car making, and garbage collection, which the average Frenchman was beginning to think beneath him. They now number almost 2M — 9 per cent of the national work force — despite an entry ban imposed three years ago on immigrant workers from outside the Common Market. At Renault, France’s largest company, some car assembly lines are manned almost exclusively by immigrants. Frenchmen are foremen or better.

While many unskilled foreigners have been willing to work for the lowest legally permitted wage, known as the Smic (currently around ($320) Fr 1600 — a month), few Frenchmen are prepared to do harsh manual work for a Smicard’s reward. The sweetener for the immigrant is threefold: it is, after all, a job, the money is usually better than he can get at home, and he benefits from France's social security system. France has also been good about helping immigrants to bring their families to join them. But unemployment now stands at well over IM and the outlook is for at least 1.2 M jobless by the end of the year. With the

exception of Spaniards and a few Portuguese, immigrant workers have not been integrated into French society. Public resentment has therefore been growing about foreigners taking jobs from the French — a sentiment which conveniently forgets that Frenchmen refused to take on such jobs. The pressure has now surfaced in the form of a FrlO,ooo ($2000) "go home” bonus offer, payable with effect from this week to unemployed foreigners. Under Mr Raymond Barre’s new antiunemployment plan announced last month, the bonus will probably swell to Fr 15,000 for immigrants facing redundancy. A vague target exists for reducing the foreign

labour force by 250,000, but the authorities would be happy for a start to eradicate the 80,000 immigrants now registered as unemployed. Government officials insist ' there is nothing compulsory in the scheme, but the reactions of immigrants and their home governments seem to range between wary and hostile. France is now negotiationg with these countries and will probably have to pledge further resettlement aid. The Algerian workers’ association calls the scheme shameful. Calculating that the average immigrant wage is Fr 2200 a month (above the minimum but below the national average), it maintains that a fair go-home bonus would

be Fr 26,000 (£5200), representing a year’s pay. Some foreigners are not only refusing to go home but are also shying away from registering for unemployment benefits in case they are obliged to leave the country. Their recourse is to slip into travail noir, the moonlighting fad which is sweeping France. Industry must assume that the scheme will have some impact. Major car manufacturers like Renault and Citroen, with their main factories in im-migrant-dense Paris, are already considering transferring some plants to the provinces. The car chiefs realise it will be hard to find native Parisians to replace foreign workers on their assembly lines. Some business leaders are worried that French competitiveness, unimpressive though it may be, will get worse. Production costs would surely rise if the bargain-basement foreigners were replaced by Frenchmen reluctant to work for minimum wages. On the face of it, the go-home scheme looks like producing meagre results unless accompanied by the sort of enforcement measures which are not now, in reasonably racially tolerant France, envisaged. — "Economist”, London.