Last week I got one of these 'Help a stranger' emails about a 10-month old baby girl with brain cancer who needs an operation her parents can't pay for. Apparently if I forward the email to three other people, AOL will make a contribution to her operation fund.

I'm 95 percent sure it's a hoax. But not 100 percent sure.

Why? Because Americans believe it's possible for a hospital to refuse an operation to a 10-month old baby girl dying of brain cancer if her parents don't have proper medical insurance. Like in that Denzel Washington movie, 'John Q', where he takes an emergency room hostage until they give his son the heart operation he can't afford.

I don't know if American hospitals really let sick children die. But the point is that Americans believe it's possible — that's why these email scams work or why people would pay to see 'John Q'.

And that's what I call la précarité: believing you'll literally be left by the wayside to die if you can't take care of yourself.

But this past week has given me a chance to see the French definition of la précarité, which is apparently your government failing to guarantee a job-for-life to every young person straight out of school.

A typical call to action against the new 'more flexible' jobs contracts

'La précarité' is the word used over and over again by those people who spent the past week protesting the government's new jobs contract, the Contrat première embauche or CPE.

As a foreigner following this debate, I hear more than just an argument over jobs policy — for me, it highlights a fundamental philosophical difference between the French and us 'Anglo-Saxons', one that revolves around this idea of the precariousness of life and how much the government is supposed to do to shield us from that.

The CPE is — according to Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin who appeared on television Sunday night to explain it — intended to create new jobs for people under 26 years of age by allowing employers to extend their trial period to two years; during this time, the employee is denied the safeguards that come with signing a Contrat à durée indéterminée (CDI), the typical employment contract signed by salaried employees.

Nearly one in four of under-26-year-olds in France is without any job at all. But the young people who took over the Sorbonne for 12 hours over the weekend or who are taking part in demonstrations all over France this week only want to solve the unemployment problem with the same job-security guarantees that the current generation of French workers has come to expect.

Job security

Here are some quotes from demonstrators taken from the Nantes version of Ouest France:

''Employers will make use of these contracts to hire but also to fire. I'm demonstrating for my two children and for all young people. How can you start a family without having your future insured?" — a 45-year-old woman from Nantes on unemployment

"We all have the right to a level of comfort and buying power to live correctly. Why should one part of our society live in instability? (la précarité)…Two years of uncertainty? Hello, daily stress." — a 22-year-old student from Nantes

"We're replacing unemployment with more uncertainty (la précarité). The people who sign them won't be on unemployment any more but they'll find themselves in a more precarious situation. It's a false solution." — an 18-year-old high-school student from Lannion

I just don't understand what they want here; and I don't mean that in a snotty, 'they-should-do-it-like-us' kind of way.

I mean I really can't imagine myself at 22 choosing unemployment over a job, any job, or, conversely preferring job security over the pursuit of job happiness.

Last week, for example, McDonald's responded to the protests by launching a primetime televised ad campaign proclaiming that it isn't interested in the CPE because 90 percent of its jobs are CDI-contracts, albeit part-time ones. It profited from the debate to portray itself, with a straight face, as a 'responsible' employer, the kind France needs more of.

I can't help but find the attitude expressed by these demonstrators, if not childish, then child-like: to look to the State to 'insure' your future because, after all, how can a person function under the daily stress of knowing they might be fired?

I'm 38-years-old, I've worked since I was 16 and all of that time have either worked as a freelancer or been subject to California's 'at-will employment' laws, meaning the employee can get rid of you at any time without justification or even explanation. (The exceptions being if the employee can prove they were fired due to discrimination on the basis of sex, race or other 'protected' categories.)

That 'daily stress' seems normal to me.

One extreme to the other

So, what is better? A mindset that means I take my future on my own shoulders as my personal responsibility but means I also worry about being left to die of operable brain cancer if I can't afford health insurance?

Or a mindset that means I'm bitterly disappointed and terrified if the government fails to provide me with lifetime job security — and, make no mistake, this disappointment and fear is what is behind a lot of French public debate in the past couple of years, from the rejection of the CPE to the rejection of the European constitution.

I don't really know what is 'better'.

But hearing my own reaction to these CPE protests makes me realise how relentlessly American I really am: if my 20-year-old came home and said they turned down their first job because it would mean signing a CPE, opting for unemployment or a CDI at McDonald's instead, I would be horrified. 'Get out there and get a job!' I can hear my own voice yelling in this imagined scenario.

I do believe — and I recognise that it's a culturally acquired belief and possibly a misguided one — that the real, dependable way to to get around la précarité is to work harder and smarter than the next guy. 

Neither do I really know whether or not the CPE will really help solve France's unemployment problem; but I can't help but find something wrong with any scenario where McDonald's can pretend for one minute to be home to the ambitious.

March 2006

Copyright Expatica

Subject: Living in France