Jospin shivers in France's bitter winter of discontent

It wasn't the storming of the Bastille, but when a crowd of unemployed protesters invaded Fouquet's, an expensive restaurant …

It wasn't the storming of the Bastille, but when a crowd of unemployed protesters invaded Fouquet's, an expensive restaurant on the Champs-Elysee, earlier this week, their cries of "we're hungry, we're hungry" resonated through France's guilty social conscience.

Among the 83 people arrested at Fouquet's was Helyette Besse, known as the "Mama" of the 1980s extremist group Action Directe. The Revolutionary Communist League, Trotskyists, gay, lesbian and ecologist fringe groups have also played a prominent role in France's five-week old revolt of the unemployed, which has presented the Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, with his biggest crisis since taking office last June.

Only a tiny proportion of France's four million unemployed have participated in the demonstrations, and many of the protesters are not even unemployed. Yet a majority of French people say they sympathise with the movement, and Mr Jospin was last night forced to explain his economic and social policy in an attempt to calm the rebellion. His popularity rating, though still high at 51 per cent, has dropped six points, and his Green and Communist coalition partners have sided with the demonstrators.

The government was slow to react when activists began occupying unemployment benefits offices in Paris, Brittany and the south of France the week before Christmas. With most of the cabinet on holiday, the crisis received little attention. On January 9th, Mr Jospin offered a billion franc (£119 million) emergency fund for the jobless. Protest organisers sniffed at the offer - just as demonstrators rejected sandwiches or a meal in the staff canteen at another stylish Paris restaurant, La Coupole, last weekend; the Coupole crowd stood their ground and got oysters, steak and even a bottle of champagne from a restaurant client.

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On January 10th, riot police forcibly expelled demonstrators from more than a dozen dole offices across France; but the cycle of sit-ins and expulsions continued. A week later, Mr Jospin offered another carrot: a special committee to study the protesters' demand for a F1,500 (£179) increase in the minima sociaux - France's financial net for the poor and unemployed.

There are eight different categories of minima sociaux including the RMI (minimum insertion revenue) and the ASS (specific solidarity allocation). Recipients number 3.3 million - six million counting their families - and all live near the official poverty level of F3,200 (£380) per month.

Mr Jospin told parliament this week that France's 12.4 per cent unemployment rate - one of the highest in Europe - is "the central question of our society". He has kept campaign promises made last spring to create 350,000 government jobs for youths and to initiate a 35-hour working week. But he is firmly committed to monetary union, and an increase in welfare benefits could doom France's participation.

Mr Jospin has been careful not to inflame public opinion against EMU by blaming the Maastricht criteria for his refusal to cave in to the revolt. The benefits increase demanded by protesters would cost F70 billion (£8.33 billion) - an unacceptable added budget deficit and tax burden, Mr Jospin said.

Furthermore, such an increase would mean that some unemployed people would earn more than the minimum wage of F5,259 (£626). Sounding uncharacteristically like a liberal free marketeer, Mr Jospin said: "We don't want a society of assistance, but a society founded on work and productive activity." For once, the right-wing opposition applauded.

The right is not so keen on Mr Jospin's plan for a 35-hour working week, which will be debated in the National Assembly on January 27th. A study released yesterday by the OFCE, an independent economic forecasting group, said the 35-hour week could create 450,000 new jobs by 2000. Another study carried out for the French Central Bank and leaked yesterday to Le Monde said the law could create over 700,000 jobs in three years.

But business management groups fiercely oppose the law, claiming it will actually worsen unemployment. To encourage job creation, management says, the government must reduce the charges sociales - welfare contributions made by French employers which total 40 per cent over and above a worker's salary.

These economic debates may not calm the modern Jacobins who invaded Fouquet's and La Coupole. Their discontent seems to be spreading: primary school teachers went on strike on Tuesday, and school nurses across France followed suit yesterday. The government is requisitioning buses so that next week's inauguration of the Stade de France, specially built for this year's World Cup, will not be sabotaged by a public transport strike. But a week-old strike by the pervenches - the policewomen who place parking tickets on cars - has gained the widest popular support.