Contenu du sommaire : Emploi et chômage

Reduction in labor time and unemployment : some considerations based on a model To fight employment by reducing the work-time of the indiwdual worker is often proposed and the idea is indeed a seductive one. Based on a rudimentary model, the authors are cible to show that the idea raises some complex considerations and is likely to have less practical success as mere accounting principles might suggest. The increase in activity rates, as jobs are filled by workers who do not count as unemployed, and the lagged adjustment of firms who seek (at least temporarily) to improve the productivity of their labor force, may cause a lesser fall in unemployment than expected : about 10 to 15 % in the short run and 30 % in the medium term. International competition rnay also mean that the reduction in labor time would bring about a deterioration of the commercial balance and an economic slowdown, thus further limiting the fall in unemployment. Such unfortunate effects could be more or less intense depending on the precise measures, their effects on prices and capacity, and hence the international competitivity of the economy. In the most unfavorable circumstances of a maintenance of wages per currently employed worker (via a compensatary rise in hourly wage rates] and a proportion, fall in capital utilisation (if there was not a compensatory increase of work on a team oasis, for example), the reduction in unemployment might be only of the order of 5 % in the short run and hardly more important in the medium term.

market structure, and attemps to develop the case that Mai 68 in France had analogous result. The last section contains some concluding observations. Taken together, the 3 cases of United States, Italy and France suggest that it is national waves of worker militancy which make the inherent tendency toward duality manifest in uniform national pattern.

Some problems about employment needs The article deals with the nature of employment needs and the demands arising from these as the necessity of creating employment. It relies upon a synthetîc description of the growth of unemployment during thé last fifteen years. Three important and interdependant causes are recalled : the insufficient number of jobs created, together with an inadequate division by sectors ; the increasing use of labour force reserves by the extension of the weight of the salaried workers ; the birth of a « perverse » relation between mobility and unemployment which has helped to loosen the link between the creating of employment and the reabsorbing of unemployment. Because of this, quantitative and qualitatitve aspects of the creation of jobs are closely related ; without a change in the nature of the jobs the reduction of unemployment will be difficult, however many jobs are created. It is therefore necessary, on the one hand, to clearly define the notion of « employment capable of reabsorbing structural unemployment and, on the other, to study the relation between investment and employment. An « employment capable of reabsorbing structural unemployment » would appear to be, from analysis, a stable employment, minimising the risks of involontary mobility. This results in certain conditions which policies of labour management by firms and policies of restructuring should fulfil ; the latter should relate in a different manner investment and internal reconversion, in such a way as to minimise the suppression of jobs. This kind of employment, moreover, must conserve and develop for the workers a technical skill transferable on the labour market. The investment-employment relation is studied in an attempt to bring out the sense of a job-creation strategy whose aim is to economise the means of production : a brake on the obsolescence of equipment, the recycling of available production capacities and investment effective in terms of the number of jobs created. In the short term, a revival of economie activity by way of consumption can be inscribed in such a strategy. But a revival in a period of crisis is an inadequate response. Its study reveals two structural factors on which a related action is necessary : shifis towards the importation of extra demartd. on the one hand, and the volume and translation of the investment into a new capacity by product, on the other. The basic problem posed by a lasting recovery of employment h that on an allocation, different from that of the past, of the means of investment as rnuch by branch as by kind of firm, based on other objectives, other criteria of choices and other tools of political economy. The criteria related to employment must in this allocation, given their recognised importance, and those, notably, related to the notion of « employment capable of reabsorbing structural unemployment .

definition of the role of unemployment. It appears to be a place in the social division of labor necessary to have the labor force reshaped by capital accumulation. The one way dependency of employment towards capital accumulation denies society to take account of the manifold influences of labor on the conditions of life. Employment policies operate in an unstable environment becouse of the changing pattern of growth. Without any planning of industriel investment, those policies cannot anything but mitigate the worst consequences of forced mobility.

The point of view developed here is backed up by references to the recent work of several dozen research teams.

affecting growth, whose origins can be found in the inflation of the past and the disequilibrium of the balance of trade. A slow growth does not ensure full employment but a lasting improvement of employment cannot go along with a high inflationary rate, nor with protectionist expedients or a reduction of productivity. Direct and « voluntarist a creation of jobs in the public sector is an, artificial solution, except when the consequences of it in terms of wages are explicitly drawn. A productive and competitive economy alone can effectively rneet the conditions of a return to full employment. Besides, the present situation of employment is affected by three specific structural difficulties : the growing rigidity of patierns of female work behaviour, the development of the mobility of labour, and the inadequacy between the supply and demand of jobs. The overall reduction of working hours, whether through the lowering of the age of retirement or the reduction of the working week, cannot be an effective solution to unemployment. Those policies must be evaluated in relation to their social significance, not in terms of employment policies. Town and country planning and the development of labour mobility programmes contribute to the reduction of tratisitional unemployment at time when industriel reorganization is both unavoidable and necessary. The growing inadequacies affecting the labour market will be gradually reduced only through a greater effort in professionnel training and information, an adaptation of labour branches and particularly an active revalorization of manual labour and a revision of concepts of employment which are far too rigid. The problem of employment in today's industrialized societies is basicatty a matter of reconciling the right to work and the free movement of labour, job security and économie efficiency. To that extent, the various possible policies of employment go to the very roots of the economic and social system.

The politics of employment reconsidered The results of employment measures taken in France during the growth process have been relatively inefficient. Changes in the economic environment induced by the crisis make more obvions the weaknesses of employment policy. Nowadays, any reformulation of an employment policy would imply first of all thought about the following and essentiel arguments : the growth/employment relationship, the emergence of the labor crisis, the changes in the labour market, and the evolution of unemployment caracteristics. Moreover, it is unpossible to consider employment policy without any investigation on the growth evolution facing the ecological problem, the effect of the strife against inequalities on consumption and the impact of jobsharing on employment. Beyond any reconsideration of the educational System and of the youth's freedom to choose a job, a study of the consequences of the labour crisis would lead to an inquiry into the evolution of growth/employment relationship, and into the basic causes of work refusal. In order to define the targets and means of its action, an efficient employment policy has to take in account the changes in the labour market introduced by two major factors, labour market segmentation and internal markets of given companies, as well as the differences in unemployment : a « frictionnal » or « marginal » type. Summing up, in spite of the depth crisis which is upsetting western economies is there an important potentiality of emplcyment in the perspective of an other kind of social and economic development and in an other logic of job creation, where thé use value of work could almost be considered as much as its exchange value.

Job exports The controversy which has been developing in the U.S.A. between trade unions and multinational firms as to the responsability of these firms in the increase of the unemployment level has corne up against an unsolvable question of method : what would the employment level be in the United States if there were no American investment abroad ? Here we suggest a different way of posing the problem : the aim is, the one hand, to avoid isolating the movement of the internationalisation of capital from the other aspects of capital accumulation : on the other hand, it is also to relate the internationalisation of capital to the forms of reproduction and of mobilising labour power and also to the nature of social relations in the various national economies. On the basis of some examples : aluminium, textiles, the movements of French capital towards the United States and Brazil, we have tried to illustrate the type of analysis which results from this theoretical conception.