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Some French forum posts on the CPE

From a forum on the Nouvel Observateur's website

freddyns - Aix en Provence - 16.03.06 23:28
France: backward country...
    I watch the debate on France 2 and I feel as if I'm hallucinating over politicians' lack of a grounding in the real world.
    We have four years of unemployment compensation, according to Mme Aubry....I'd like to have my four years!
    They talk about the professionally unemployed, I'd like to be one, but at 400 euros a month, where's the professional part?
    Does a politician know what you can do with 400 euros?
    If for some reason a manager finds himself unemployed, his chances of getting another job at 49 are very slim.
    After the age of 36 in France, you're too old!
    What do you do? Kill yourself? Leave France? Wait for pre-retirement?
    At 49, I consider myself excluded from society.

teudrick - Pau - 07.02.06 15:09
    I heard the MEDEF [the employers' group] on the radio this morning and I can't resist throwing out a little note onto the web.
    The ANPE [French government unemployment office] has become a temp agency. We have entered the era of cyclical employment. It looks as if we will have to get used to a perpetual cycle of employment and unemployment for the greater glory of more and more arrogant bosses who are only concerned with "cutting costs" (translation: "profit").
    ANPE: a reservoir of cheap labor, of always-available human merchandise, which should, according to the MEDEF, think it's lucky to be convoked from time to time for a discount job.
    Government: prison guards in the service of the big bosses (the prisoners, that's us). Thanks Villepin, thanks MEDEF. How fun life is with you.

citoyenelecteur - bordeaux - 17.03.06 12:37
    How many false debates generated by these politicians completely disconnected from democracy and from our country. The CPE is the latest example!
    All employees suffer from a recurring sickness: unemployment.
    What is the answer? Creation of a CNE and a CPE.
    One more toxic smokescreen!
    Who are these reforms destined for? Simply the lobby of  big bosses (who claim a number for their side that is much higher than reality!)
    And even they are acting fussy because they're still stuffed from their previous gifts.
    A company recruits when the economy is growing, when the demand for consumable goods grows...
    But no! Above all nothing will be done to create the conditions for economic development (the good joke is to hide behind the difficulties of globalization!)
    We can't reduce the government's way of life!
    We aren't going to make banks become economically active by giving loans to entrepreneurs.
    We aren't going to give new loans to allow people to buy property.
    It's so much easier to get rich sleeping, by firing people, and they have too much money, the banks buy real estate in key economic areas to the detriment of real entrepreneurs and small businessmen!
    We don't tax insurance companies that do the opposite of what they promise in ads on the public disinformation channels!
    We don't tax the oil companies that pollute our beaches and our environment! (but which give us a very highly taxed gasoline!)
    No, it's much better to go after welfare cheats....
    It's much better to create a CPE that will not make anyone hire more people (that is supposed to be the goal, right?) because businesses aren't hiring.
    It's much better to replace the old CDI [permanent employment contracts] with CNE and CPE, and make things worse for the employees who are already suffering.
    Shamelessly, afterwards we declare that the CNE is a success even though no new jobs have been created, even though the number of CNE created is equal to the number of CDIs lost.
    I see around me young people covered with diplomas who begin their professional life with CDDs [short-term employment contracts] in large French companies before getting to a normal CDI.
    Well, in the future, they'll begin their professional life with a CDD and then a CPE. The great innovation!
    ...During this time, our children are in the street confronted with groups of vandals...and the riot police (who get some stones thrown at them-- but that's their job, right? and they are so well paid)
    France is weighed down with lead, families are in unbearable stress (but prices have scarcely gone up, right?), our young entrepreneurs go abroad (where there is growth), and we still have at the Elysée Palace [where President Chirac lives] the same well-protected guardian behind his walls.
    Tomorrow we'll see!

......................

From Forums on the website of L'Express

Auteur : marco
Date d'envoi : 16/03/2006

Face to face with the hardliners for the CPE who are deaf to everything else, I try in vain to explain that employment will only come when we stop strangling businesses with so many taxes and forced contributions. Most intelligent countries have understood this. The essential thing for a boss is not to fire, but to hire. And to hire, you have to be able to have the means.

And to have the means, you can't be in a desperate struggle 365 days a year.

Go explain that to the politicians, not one of whom knows what it is to work, not one of whom understands business and its needs.

................
Auteur : Watt
Date d'envoi : 15/03/2006

At the same time, if we elect these guys, it's so they can do their job afterwards. If they have to ask everyone's advice all the time, they'd never do anything. Besides, this has been discussed for a long time...For once someone actually did something. Also, stop crying wolf before even having seen its tail.  The CPE hasn't even started to be applied and people are screaming about a scandal. Have you tried it so that you know? Also, all the people who aren't smashing windows and stopping students from working, maybe that's because they're ready to try it. It's not just a handful of people (there are 60 million people in France, do the math about the demonstrators) who are going to decide for the majority, especially since they haven't been elected with universal suffrage! Do something productive instead.
............................

Auteur : cathaline
Date d'envoi : 16/03/2006

    And the 35-hour week, what a marvel! Did that create any jobs? Well I don't know about them!
    Give it a chance for heaven's sake!
...............................

Auteur : rodrigue
Date d'envoi : 16/03/2006

    For sure, France is a country of charity cases [assistés], 35 hours of work a week, the shame! and to see it encouraged by the left looking for voters, young people are naive to fall into the trap, perhaps they imagine that at the end of their studies they'll find the job and salary they hope for, dream on! there is less and less work, and it's not getting better, the bosses are packing their suitcases, and there's a reason for that!
...............................................

Auteur : 5291
Date d'envoi : 15/03/2006
To all young people.
No CPE, then what, you think "work" is going to come looking for you? Why not enter the world of work right away, which will allow you to make useful professional acquaintances and take your place quickly?
...................................

The decline in the population of Germany is accelerating. In spite of all the political and social efforts for more family-friendly policies, Germany still has the lowest birthrate and number of children per 1000 inhabitants in the whole world.

According to a study published today by the Berlin Institute for Population and Development (Berlin-Institut für Bevölkerung und Entwicklung), each woman in Germany gives birth, statistically speaking, to 1.35 babies in her lifetime, the lowest rate since 1945. There is no end in sight to this trend, the study shows; on the contrary, it will only grow stronger-- with severe results for the retirement system and the economy of East Germany.

The number of children born between Flensburg and Füssen [i.e. in the former East Germany] will, according to the estimates of the private Institute, continue to decline until 2050. At that time only half as many children--340,000-- will be born in Germany every year as there are now. According to statistics, last year some 680,000 boys and girls came into the world [in Germany]. Because of the sinking birthrate and aging society, the experts estimate that there will be growing immigration from young, highly qualified expert workers from developmentally weak regions, especially to East Germany.

This decline can no longer be stopped, but only lessened, said Hans Fleisch, the chairman of the Institute. He is asking for a national drive with the cooperation of all groups in society. In themselves, measures such as the extension of public child care do not have any effect to speak of.

"The negative demographic development of Germany is still increasing," Fleisch said. In the past two years, the decline in population has definitively set in. The very low birthrate of the past three decades has sunk even further. "So Germany is the leader in the negative sense," said Institute Director Reiner Klingholz.

Only the Vatican has a lower birthrate than East Germany

The new provinces [of the former East Germany] will be especially hard hit by the decline in population, in the estimates of the Institute, which is funded by private foundations. Here there will be a greater tendency for young and well-educated women to emigrate to western Germany, said Klingholz. Unemployed and badly educated men will stay behind, and therefore they will not be starting families. No later than 2015, East Germany will experience the "second demographic shock," when because of the decline in births after 1990, half the new generation of parents will be missing. After the reunification of Germany, the birthrate in the former East Germany went down to .77 children per woman. "That was the lowest rate anywhere in the world except for the Vatican," said Klingholz.

Klingholz expects that until 2025 there will be further emigration from underdeveloped regions, including, besides the new provinces, parts of the Ruhr and Saarland areas. This will profit the wealthier regions, especially Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. There will be a  struggle among those who earn more. "There will be no question of equality of living conditions," said Klingholz, and pointed to the fact that since 1990, one and a half million people have moved away from East Germany. Of the 20 urban regions with negative future growth, 19 are in East Germany-- ten in Sachsen-Anhalt, which has suffered the most from the breakdown of industry.

As a way out, the authors of the study suggest making it easier for women to combine a family and a career.  Boys must also be encouraged much more, as they have fallen far behind girls. "We have let a young male proletariat develop which represents a social fire hazard," said Klingholz. Building back the community should be done soon and in a humane fashion. The researchers also plead for a unified effort among the regions of Germany. The housing industry is demanding, as a consequence of the study, that an urban rebuilding program should go on after the projected final year of 2009.

The researchers aim pointed criticism at businesses and unions who lack a sense of responsibility in the demographic decline. "A strike will be organized for 18 minutes of work time, but not for family-friendly policies at work," said Fleisch, referring to the salary conflict in public service.

--Volker Warkentin, Reuters DE

How did Alain Mabanckou, the author of Verre cassé [Broken Glass], make the French language his own? In Brazzaville, with difficult French dictées, then by devouring San Antonio and Victor Hugo.

Why did you choose to write in French?

Alain Mabanckou: For me, it's natural to write in this language. I've always thought there was no linguistic conflict between the French language and me. And it seemed natural to me to use this language. When I was growing up, French was a street language just like Lingala. It was the language of administration. It was the language of educated people. It was also the language in the market where we pretended to be grownup by speaking French. If I write in French, it's because all the African languages I know are oral languages. The only literary texts I had read at the beginning were texts in French, even when they were English-speaking writers. The usefulness of the French language is also that it allows French-speaking Africans to read Africans who write in English, especially the Nigerians: Amos Tutuola, Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka. Starting from that, French becomes a language that federates. The colonized can use it against the colonizer and see what is happening to their brothers. It is a bridge to discover another world. Some people say that we should abandon it because it is a language of colonization, but without French I would never have understood Boubacar Boris Diop. He'll be speaking Wolof and I'll be speaking Lingala. If he writes in Wolof-- which he did for his last novel-- I can't read it, I don't understand his universe. You can even plot against France using the French language.

Do you feel the language as a foreign object?

I believe the language belongs to us. It belongs to everyone. Once a writer has a language, it's something that belongs to him, which is in him from then on. There's not even any question about writing in French. It's an inspiration, an instrument, like English for people like Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, Naipaul. For them, too, English is a colonial language, but they have transformed it in a way that makes it something that can astonish the English themselves. These authors bring the weight of their universe [into English] and give the language some fresh air.

What were your first literary emotions?

I was fascinated by French poetry: Lamartine, Musset, Baudelaire. These poems struck me from adolescence onward. I would read them in the form of extracts in the Lagard et Michard [textbooks]. The same with Victor Hugo. You saw him in the photo with his beard. You discovered his sad fate. His daughter who drowned with her husband. The man who was hunted, the exile. You wanted to be part of the life of these authors. I said to myself: "His life is like mine." A writer functions by imitaion. By the way, Victor Hugo himself wanted to be Chateaubriand. His poetry spoke to me. Mine is essentially familial. It speaks of the death of my mother. Of the sister I would have loved to have, instead of being an only child.

In your novel Verre cassé (pub. Le Seuil, 2005), the characters are pursued by bad luck.

Yes, it's a sort of hidden autobiography. The main problem is the fact that Broken Glass (the name of the main character, an alcoholic writer) makes the decision on his own to sacrifice himself to go join his mother. The novel also talks about nostalgia and exile. I too had to leave. I could not return to Congo-Brazzaville because of the civil war....And if you live in France, you are automatically considered an opponent. I lived in France for 13 years.

Who are the African writers who have marked you the most?

The Guinean Camara Laye, the author of L'Enfant noir [The Black Child]. Editions Plon has asked me to write the preface for the new edition of the novel. How ironic! At school, I was whipped because I couldn't do the dictée of L'Enfant noir. If you made five mistakes, you got five blows with the stick. It was unlucky because sometimes the best one in the class had only one mistake. The master still had to hit him, even if he didn't do it as enthusiastically as for the one who had 25 mistakes. At the time, there was not a lot of African literature in the program. We read Germinal by Zola, Terre des hommes by  Saint-Exupéry, Les mains sales by Sartre. We studied mainly French literature. It was at university that I began to discover African literature. I was a law student....

How did you come in contact with those books?

Thanks to my father. He was a porter at a hotel in Pointe-Noire [the economic capital of Congo-Brazzaville]. When clients left books at the hotel, he would bring them home. My father did not know how to read, but he adored books. He thought it was important for his son to have books. He brought me back lots of novels. In particular the work of Frédéric Dard and of San Antonio. Without my father, I would certainly never have become a writer.

Don't African writers have a tendency to write books aimed especially to please the French public?

There is a sort of allegiance. In fact, the readership of an African writer is 99% European. It is not only due to the fact that books are expensive. In Africa, we have cultural centers. Even if the book is there, there needs to be a culture of reading. Sometimes it's because Europeans have read and appreciated something that an African will read this or that work. If an African book is successful, it's often because it corresponds to what Europe expects from an African writer. That's the case for Je suis noir et je n'aime pas le manioc (Gaston Kelman, pub. Max Milo)[I'm black and I don't like manioc root]. They'll say, "This is funny, this black man has broken the cliché about black people."

Isn't it frustrating to have to write for Westerners?

Yes, it would be nice to have more readers in Africa. But the advantage in Africa is that one copy is read by at least ten people. Besides, there is a real change now with the spread of paperbacks. Black authors are no longer stuck in the African collection. It's time for African literature to be grown up. For it to stop whining.

The act of writing is a solitary exercise. Is it accepted in Africa?

African life is essentially a life a bit suffocated by the community aspect. The individual is erased in society, even if that is starting to change. Everything has to be done in connection with the group. The act of writing is in its essence a selfish act, since you have to withdraw to reflect. One can't do that on a continent where people are constantly walking in on you. So, that paralyzes creativity. If you withdraw, they'll say you are sick, misanthropic, asocial. An African writer who lives on the contintent calls up mistrust. Writers down there live in a sort of interior exile.

--Interview by Pierre Cherruau, Courrier International

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