The French unemployed are under new pressure to seek work after President Macron told them they will lose their comfortable benefits if they fail to show they are looking for a job.
To the anger of unions and many unemployed people, inspectors have been ordered to carry out 250,000 checks in the next six months in an attempt to break a long tradition in which some of the recently redundant make little attempt to find new work.
According to the government, such people account for about half a million of the three million unemployed, boosted by the benefits system that can pay them up to €1,300 a week for two years.
In the UK, people out of work can claim jobseeker’s allowance at a rate of £74.70 a week. However, the benefit can be suspended if job centre staff believe a claimant is not actively looking for work or turns down an offer.
Macron had gradually tightened the criteria for benefits until the pandemic began but few jobseekers were struck off for refusing offers or failing to look for work. In 2019, Édouard Philippe, the prime minister, said hundreds of thousands of people were exploiting a rule that gives them more money if they lose their job than when they were in work.
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Macron has acted because, after billions were spent subsidising jobs in the pandemic, 300,000 are unfilled. Yet unemployment is more than 8 per cent.
Unions and left-wing opposition figures, who claim that Macron is a “president of the rich”, are accusing him of playing to right-wing voters as he campaigns for re-election in April. The CFTC union recalled an incident in which Macron once told a jobless gardener he “only had to cross the street to find work”.
The CFC union, which represents managers, said Macron’s policy would force professionals to accept jobs below their qualifications and experience, thereby “depriving people who are less qualified of work”.
President Sarkozy promised in 2008 to strike people off for refusing more than one job offer but the employment service, Pôle Emploi, still allows more than two refusals and rarely cuts benefits. “In France, it is not really considered bad to receive unemployment benefits without really looking for work, unlike other countries,” Antoine Foucher, a former chief of staff to the labour minister, said.
