French riot an unemployment explosion
Recent French riot in the streets of Paris suburbs and other
parts have awakened the world, that even unemployment can be a
reason for unrest among the population. Before, burning cars and
stores the French government never realized there could be the
problem of unemployment crisis too with such a developed
country. Thanks to media for its efforts to spread information.
French is always ahead for the revolutions and this riot is the
revolution that made Government to rethink of its policies. It
is beginning!!!!
There is ethnic division in the country but has less effect on
the country's culture. People in this country are more modern
and understanding so ethnic or racial crisis is negligible.
People believe their weekends in seacoast rather than going to
church. Most churches are empty even on Sundays but recently
some Muslim communities have begun their presence effective.
Nearly 10% of population is Muslim from Africa or other parts,
and 10% are Chinese, east European, Sri-Lankan, and other
Asians. All together form 20% of total population of the
country. 90% of them have sheltered in urban cities and 70% of
them live in poverty.
Therefore, we should not blame racism alone for the riot rather
the blame should go to inequality due to wide gap between poor
and rich. Major crisis among these communities is the lack of
suitable opportunities to upgrade their standard of life. They
have to content with limited choices. Governments have never
tried to uplift their standard of life. They find employment
problems due to ineligibility for better opportunities. They are
not still improved enough to fit into French economic growth and
the government too has not initiated to promote them.
Working class including the white population is unhappy, as
there is wide gap between the demand and supply of employment
opportunities. Because of high supply of employment with less
demand, most of them work in minimum salary. Trade unions can
only fight for the minimum salary but the issue is different.
The main issue is lack of demand for employment to determine
worth of job. Automation has reduced the scope of employment
opportunities. I visited one liquor industry in Normandy and
found 2 people running the show, also the self service in many
sectors have contributed to reduce employment opportunities.
Therefore, the government has to reevaluate the situation and
open more areas and scopes of employment opportunities.
Five% of total working population is in agriculture and 25% in
industries, indicates the education system is in relation to
urban service sectors that consume nearly 70% of the working
population. Major percentage of rural agricultural and
industrial employment is taken-care by automatic units.
Excessive usage of automation is curse as long as people sit
without employment.
The country is in socialist pattern, yet governments' protection
is for big groups. Therefore, super giants like Carrefour,
Leclerc, Auchan etc monopolize the market to squeeze farmers and
small manufacturers to make high margin. Competition minimizes
the work force. Big groups get bigger and bigger on the other
hand working class goes poorer and poorer. Living expenses are
too high and to maintain they need enough salary to meet minimum
requirements. Small entrepreneurs' claim 35 hours working law is
a black spot to the economy. My plea to this is the claim is
baseless, when major population is involved in service sectors
and even the industries run by least work force. Governments
need to consider distribution of equal opportunities and
resources to match needs of the population. Excessive of
automation is unsuitable to any country as long as the
population does not have employment.
Excessive burden on entrepreneurs towards the contribution to
social security, medical insurance minimum salaries etc cause
them to retain less and less employees and seek more and more
work from them. A good employer indirectly pays nearly twice to
the employee. With the same amount entrepreneur could keep two
people. By reducing the percentage and increasing retirement
age, would ease the entrepreneur. Generally, when the employee
reaches the age 50 considered of no use, at least this is the
practice in many industrial set ups. Early retirement is no
solution for improving employment opportunities rather this only
increase number of unemployed in the country. Retired person
ends up becoming burden to the government. Very soon, French
Government is going to face this situation until retirement age
increased to minimum 68-70. Nearly 10 million of the total
population is over 65 year old and are retired unemployed, this
number to grow further as between age group of 20-64 are nearly
35 million that means more than half of the population.
Indirectly, 35 million between age group of 20-64 have burden of
rest of the population. They have to pay more taxes to maintain
standard of rest. If the retirement age increased, they too
would contribute their share for economy. Social security
measures to unemployed are good as long as completion of minimum
working hours fixed to 27,000 or 15 years whichever is before.
Link to this article:
http://www.sadashivan.com/frenchriotanunemploymentexplosion/