“Work must always pay better than inactivity. » This precept, which he repeats over and over again, Gabriel Attal intends to have it applied with a new reform of unemployment insurance, which he must mention at the 20 hours from TF1. After a first reform in 2019 then a reduction in the duration of compensation in 2023, this is the third time under Emmanuel Macron that the government has tackled the question of work by attacking the weakest: the unemployed.
An easy choice, because “the unemployed are not organized collectively to campaign, to demonstrate, to assert their interests,” explains Thomas Coutrot, researcher associated with IRES and member of Les Economistes Atterrés.
Unemployed people far from (getting) mobilized
According to sociologist researcher at CNRS Patrick Bruneteaux, this lack of organization is linked to the “fragmentation of the sub-proletariat”, in other words people excluded from usual wage employment. Firstly because, and “this is an error of all workers’ struggles”, the unions have “collaborated in the divide” between poor and workers. “The employee movement has the greatest difficulty in feeling solidarity with those who have fallen on the other side,” he regrets.
Then because this “sub-proletariat has no class consciousness”, analyzes the man who is also a journalist on Cause Commune radio. There are many groups that the sociologist manages to categorize. There, the “strong attraction of young people in the city for virilism which leads them towards security professions”, but whose model “of the dominant male does not refer to class consciousness”. Elsewhere, there are “groups of Zadists who set up self-managed cooperatives”, a little cut off from the world. Scattering adds another layer to the problem.
To drive the point home, according to a study carried out by four associations in 2021, almost one in two unemployed people saw their mental health deteriorate. Anxiety, depression… Unemployment isolates and this intimate, personal ordeal pushes one to cower. It is “not a condition in which we can recognize ourselves and forge bonds of solidarity”, supports Thomas Coutrot.
Guilty of not working
In contrast, this “right-wing government”, says Patrick Bruneteaux, “represents the interests of the bourgeoisie” and therefore avoids “the fight against tax fraud, the production tax, the ISF, the prevention of Taubin tax, all these things which have already been quantified during the pension reform”. “The bourgeoisie is hiding behind a scapegoat. We create guilt, humiliation, the judicialization of the poor through the fraudster,” forgetting to specify that he is “a product of the liberal capitalist system,” he denounces.
Thus, the government prefers to “increase the pressure on job seekers so that they accept the jobs as offered” rather than “ask the question of working conditions or salary increases”, criticizes Thomas Coutrot. A “logic of coercion” denounced by the economist, supported by Patrick Bruneteaux. This notes “an assault on the poor, who are always bad poor”.
Poor classes versus pop classes
Having only a few voices to represent them, the unemployed “lend themselves well to stigmatization”, notes Thomas Coutrot, between lawsuits for laziness and the idea that they would be “too well compensated”. However, the 2019 law has already “eliminated the rare cases where remaining unemployed was more advantageous in the short term than returning to employment”, specifies the economist. And “we must not forget that the unemployed have contributed through their work” previously, points out Patrick Bruneteaux.
But by playing with this preconceived idea of overpayment, the government is not only acting with ease; it also sends a political message. A message for “France which gets up early” said Nicolas Sarkozy, “France which works”, prefers Gabriel Attal. The “small fringe just above the social minimum (who) is fed up with seeing people in their city not working and being entitled to APL”, describes the sociologist. In short, the working class attracted by the RN vote. Winning combo for the government: by reducing compensation instead of increasing low wages, it pleases the jealous popular class and the cautious employers, while taking out steam on a poor person incapable of defending himself. Why deprive yourself?