Observation (CEACR) - adopted 1990, published 77th ILC session (1990)

Employment Policy Convention, 1964 (No. 122) - France (Ratification: 1971)

1. The Committee notes the information supplied by the Government for the period 1986-88 which is contained in the Employment Delegation document "Assessment of Activities 1987-88", to which the list of new texts respecting employment is attached.

2. The Government recalls the directions in which employment policy has been developing for several years. These are four in number and, as the Committee noted in its previous comments, mainly cover:

(i) facilitating the transformation of enterprises and taking measures to assist and support restructuring;

(ii) promoting the vocational and occupational reintegration into the workforce of vulnerable groups such as young persons, the long-term unemployed and the disabled by means of various forms of specific assistance for employment and training;

(iii) encouraging both the development of employment through the creation of enterprises and the creation of new activities, particularly through a policy of local incentives and activities;

(iv) protecting loss of income through unemployment benefits and using these benefits more actively to stimulate the reintegration of jobseekers.

3. The document by the Employment Delegation mentioned above gives a detailed account for 1987-88 of the measures taken in those four main policy areas. The Committee notes in particular that, as regards young persons, who account for 30 per cent of jobseekers, the programmes that have been pursued (employment opportunity activities, training courses, contracts involving alternate training and employment) benefited 1,200,000 young persons in 1987 and had a positive impact in terms of employment. These measures, which broadly involve all the partners in employment policy (enterprises, territorial communities, training institutions), were to be pursued in 1989 with the objective of maintaining the levels attained as regards the number of young persons involved and improving the quality of the activities, particularly as regards training. The document also describes a series of measures that were introduced in 1987 and developed in 1988 to promote the social and vocational reintegration of the long-term unemployed through training and recruitment incentives. Although it is still difficult to assess the full effects of these measures on employment, the extent of the phenomenon of long-term unemployment (840,000 persons without a job for more than one year in 1987) is of concern to the authorities who consider it to be "the most serious problem on the labour market". The Committee notes that assistance to the unemployed by way of the creation of enterprises, which the Committee noted in its previous observation as the principal employment promotion measure, has not yet been the subject of an official and systematic assessment.

4. The Committee appreciates the information contained in the document prepared by the Employment Delegation, although it considers that this information only partially responds to the Committee's previous comments and the requests set out in the report form for the Convention. Based on specific employment and labour-market management policies, the Government's report does not fully permit an overall appraisal of the employment policy, in the meaning of the Convention, and fails to supply information on the situation, level and trends of employment and unemployment.

5. According to the information contained in official documents prepared by national bodies (the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies) and international organisations (the annual reports and economic surveys of the OECD), the Committee believes that it can identify the following trends: after several years of contraction, jobs started to be created in 1987, and this trend was confirmed in 1988 when there was a particular increase in job creation in commercial sectors other than agriculture (in particular the manufacturing and construction industries). However, the recovery was still too limited (0.1 per cent in 1987 and 0.8 per cent in 1988) to result in a significant reduction in the unemployment rate, which remained over 10 per cent in 1987 and 1988 and was among the highest of the seven major economies in the OECD. Furthermore, two trends appear to have been strengthened: periods of unemployment are continuing to grow longer and "particular forms" of employment are increasing at the same rate as the fall in full-time salaried employment. The relationship between precarious forms of employment and unemployment is suggested by the fact that in 1987 over half the persons who became unemployed did so after the termination of contracts for a limited period (fixed-term and temporary contracts).

6. In view of these developments, of the relative impact of specific employment policies and the limits attained by "social treatment" measures to deal with unemployment, which remain a massive problem (affecting between 2.4 and 2.5 million economically active persons in 1987 and 1988), the Committee would be grateful if the Government would indicate in greater detail the measures that have been taken or are envisaged to give effect to the fundamental provisions of the Convention, including those of Article 1 which call for an active policy designed to promote full, productive and freely chosen employment to be declared and pursued "as a major goal", and Article 2 which provides that the measures to be adopted for the achievement of these objectives must be decided upon and kept under review "within the framework of the co-ordinated economic and social policy". It hopes that the Government's next report will contain appropriate information that will enable the Committee to make a better assessment of the manner in which the Convention is applied as a whole.