The recent riots in the french suburbs reveal to what extremes unemployment can lead. Young people, most without hope, without training, or if they do have it, without jobs, are living in a situation of territorial and social apartheid. The answer is partly specific to the suburbs : the assertion of authority for the security of people, as well as a city policy. But the main cause is more general : there is a total of 5 million French without jobs, who observe that society has no place to offer them. Helping them out of unemployment, giving them a new dignity and a social role is a condition for the survival of our societies. Such is the object of our proposition.
Unemployment is traditionally defined as the absence of paid work. For practical purposes, a large portion of the unemployed person’s activity is devoted to acquiring skills and looking for a job. Our proposition: acknowledging that training oneself and looking for a job constitutes a socially useful activity. That it deserves a status in the form of an evolution contract, with all the features of an employment contract: income, social welfare, supervision and professional opportunity. Setting-up this contract would lead to a profound change of our social policies, enabling the elimination of unemployment within 5 years. Its cost would not exceed that of recent tax cut programs, with a far more dynamic effect on buying power, the development, the level of qualification, of innovation, and social cohesion.
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