Jobless extend fight to health sector

Whoever said the world belongs to early risers never saw the bedraggled, woebegone bunch of unemployed men and women who gathered…

Whoever said the world belongs to early risers never saw the bedraggled, woebegone bunch of unemployed men and women who gathered near the Gare de Lyon at 6 a.m. yesterday morning, behind a door with red spray paint letters saying "AC!"

Nobody in the French government needs to be told what "AC!" is.

The militant group has mustered half of the demonstrators in France's six week-old jobless revolt, which drove Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's popularity down nine points last week. AC! is pronounced "assez" - "enough" - and the letters also stand for "Act against Unemployment".

Spokesmen for the unemployed are polished, and skilfully debate with the beleaguered Minister of Employment, Martine Aubry.

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But yesterday morning's group looked like they had been caught in a police dragnet. These were the tired, swollen, ill-shaven faces that you see begging in the streets, sleeping in the Metro - the men and women whom French politicians used to dismiss with passing allusions to "the excluded".

It is minus 5 degrees Celsius outside, but the tall, balding man in a T-shirt who demands to see my press card ("We have to watch out for police informers") is barefoot. I hold out two passes, one from the foreign ministry, the other from the president's office.

"What's this?" the barefoot man demands. Do I write about President Chirac? Sometimes. "Salope!" he explodes, repeating the obscenity as he paces through the little rooms waving my press card.

The tables are covered with overflowing ash-trays and spilt coffee. A man with heavy bags under his eyes and ragged clothes blows his nose with his fingers. "Let's smoke a joint," he says to one of his companions in misfortune. "You roll it".

An hour later, the group begins moving downstairs. It is still dark outside, but I can read one of the posters by the street lamp:

"He who sows poverty reaps anger."

A Che Guevara look-alike shouts up to the first floor window, "Comrades, comrades", and the jobless begin spilling into the street. "Che" has a yellow banner tucked under one arm and hands out stickers saying "Together, for our rights". His real name is Farid, and he is the French son of Algerian immigrants. A computer programmer, Farid has not worked for five years.

Most of the jobless rebels are in their early 40s, so two men in their 20s and a blonde woman stand out. Eve (22) is pretty and well-groomed - I had mistaken her for a journalist upstairs. She works part-time at McDonald's for the minimum hourly wage. Her boyfriend, Jerome, and his childhood friend, Stephane, are unemployed actors.

Jerome says he cannot take a job as a waiter or a security guard because he would lose access to the dole office's job offers for actors. Because of a mistake in the administration's Kafka-esque bureaucracy, he has received no benefits since October, he says. Rent on his 8 sq metre studio apartment (without a bathroom) is £178 per month, so much of the time he goes hungry.

Jerome tells with touching sincerity how his father abandoned his mother and her business failed, how he suffers chronic stomach pains from not eating. But he cannot understand how outrageous the demands of unemployed entertainers sound: they want to be paid for taking acting lessons and think time spent in class should establish eligibility for dole payments.

Stephane looks meaner and more street-wise than his friend Jer ome. The scars on his face date from his "first mistake" - an accident in a stolen car at age 15. You have to be 25 to qualify for the £238 monthly Minimum Insertion Revenue (RMI), so Stephane did "odd jobs - pick-pocketing, selling dope" until his 25th birthday. "The RMI saved me from doing dumb things," he says. "But if they don't raise it soon, I may have no choice."

The security guards at the Henri Mondor Hospital in Creteil do a double-take and grab their telephones as the jobless swarm past the gate. Inside, the group waits for hours. "We wanted to invade a big company that exploits its workers, to show solidarity between unemployed and workers," Farid, the Che Guevera look-alike says.

But their group of 20 is too small today, so they decide to occupy the hospital instead, to emphasise their demands for free health care for everyone, including illegal immigrants. They also want an end to what they see as a slide towards a two-tier, rich and poor health-care system, "like Britain's".

While the militants wait to negotiate the terms of their occupation with the hospital director, a sound system is set up in the lobby. A red-headed nurse in a white coat seizes the microphone to say, "We are really, really happy that you came here. It would be inadmissible for the police to intervene."

Sympathetic hospital employees and jobless demonstrators take turns speaking. Eve, Jerome, Stephane and Farid listen, sitting cross-legged on the floor. They have no money and no jobs, but all the time in the world.