The Agency Serving the
Unemployed…and Businesses
Florence Raynal, Journalist, France
Part of the French Ministry of
Employment and Solidarity, the National Employment Agency has the task of improving the
operation of the labor market and helping to match job seekers to vacancies. Anxious to
keep in step with social change, for the last ten years it has been involved in a dynamic
policy drive to modernize and introduce new services. The key to this process is
personalization and flexibility.
"Dirty and dilapidated premise",
"unfriendly staff", "interminable queues"', "out-of-date
advertisements", "incorrect information". Some fifteen years ago, to say
the job seekers did not praise the merits of the French National Employment Agency, ANPE,
is an understatement! Happily, times have changed, and against a background of rising
unemployment, the public establishment set up in 1967 has brought about a genuine
mutation.
Indeed, since 1990, thanks to three progress
agreements signed with the State-the latest will end in 2003-ANPE is modernizing itself,
becoming more professional and is now a high quality intermediary for the unemployed,
required to prove they are seeking employment in order to receive benefits, just like
businesses. To this end, staffs have been given training, more staff taken on and
financial resources allocated. The operating budget of the ANPE, apart from measures to
increase employment, rose in 1999 to 1.1 billion Euros', the equivalent to 7.2 billion
francs.
An individually tailored system of aid:;; A
first sign of modernization, and of the respect due to those who ANPE now refers to as its
"clients", is that increasing attention is being paid to their reception. First,
the offices have been renovated and refurbished, and some of the 860 agencies have even
been re-housed. Once the client pushes open the door, a member of the staff comes to meet
him, then the same person will be in a position to answer most of his questions. Lastly,
to best meet the varied expectations of the 5 million people who pass through its offices
each year, ANPE has perfected a range of responses.
Self-service tools have been developed for
the most independent, who can then use the agency as a resource center. Up to date job
vacancies and training opportunities are thus available to them, not only literature on
the labor market and about specific trades and the newspapers, but also free access to a
computer terminal, Minitel, and soon, in all branches, to the Internet. The ANPE site also
provides a permanent list of 90,000 job vacancies, lists the various measures and
assistance currently available, and allows targeted advertisements to be sent.
The introduction of job seeking workshops at
all offices permits work on a specific aspect: CV, a job interview, a business
project…Individual interviews with job counselors are also possible. Lastly, a
package is provided to help people having the most difficulty finding a work. The latter
make a binding agreement with a named counselor, who, after finalizing the details with
them, guides them for a specified period and offers them help in various ways. Not
compulsory, this service, known as 'fresh start' is offered to those targeted by the
French National Action for Employment Plan, which aims to reduce long term unemployment
and to prevent social exclusion. From July 2001, French Back to Work Aid Scheme, PARE,
will reinforce this idea of individual monitoring and contractual commitment by extending
it to all unemployed registering after having worked four out of the previous eighteen
months.
Job seekers are not only the winners as the
result of ANPEs more professional approach. Increasing number of businesses are entrusting
some of their vacancies to them; and for good reason:; in 1999, of the some 3 million
vacancies offered by the 500,000 client companies, 2.6 million were followed by
appointments. Here too several levels of service are offered. These go from a
straightforward display ad with a named correspondent to the preliminary selection of
candidates and to guaranteeing their validity, or even to providing support for companies
having problems recruiting staff.
The trust of businesses has been won:;
"To traditional prospecting", explains Marc Hoffmann, Director of the Dinan,
Brittany, ANPE, "we have added a marketing activity, in order to build real
strategies with companies and work on recruiting their future employees by offering them a
made-to-measure service". The innovation includes recruitment skill. "This means
no longer setting selection criteria: qualifications, experience, etc, but basing
selection on a person's ability to do a particular job." This is done by noting the
tasks involved, devising tests and training courses. This system in particular encourages
a greater diversity in women's employment. In order to facilitate access to training, a
framework agreement has also been signed with the French National Association for Adult
Vocational Training, Afpa.
The agencies are autonomous and can run
specific scheme to suit the realities of the area. Thus the Dinan ANPE has set up a system
of 'temporary job centers'. 'We are in a rural area and many people find it difficult to
get to the agency. We have thus decided to head for the most excluded by temporarily
moving ourselves to their neighborhood", explains Marc Hoffmann. On the spot, staff
offer people the opportunity to join a scheme for three months, draw up a list of their
skills with them, write a new description of what they are looking for…and canvass
every local very small businesses to find posts and inform them about the various aids
available to them when taking on more staff. Run with outside service providers, this
experiment is emblematic of ANPEs determination to be open to every opportunity.
This openness is also directed abroad:
through close cooperation between International ANPE and the French International
Migration Office, a global public employment network has been set up in Paris and the
regions. In 'espaces emploi international' applicants for jobs abroad can find relevant
advertisements, literature, supports and administrative assistance.
Lastly, staff exchange schemes are now
organized between ANPE and its European counterparts. The objective is to find new ways of
intervening in the labor market, especially for those members of the public in greatest
difficulty. Some of these people could moreover, start to see their lot improve, since one
year, against a background of economic recovery, long term unemployment has fallen by more
than 25%. Text courtesy: Label France number 43, April, 2001. French embassy Kathmandu.
Designer Children?
-Gregory Stock, USA
We stand at an unprecedented juncture
in human history. The powerful technologies that have so reshaped our world are now
swinging back on ourselves. As we unravel our biology and learn to manipulate it, we are
seizing control of our evolution and moving into the unknown. This breakthrough will not
only challenge our most fundamental values and beliefs, it promises (9some would say
threatens) to eventually transform us. The rapid advance of molecular genetics will force
us to consider the very question of what it mean to be human. The purest embodiment of our
coming manipulation of human biology is "germline" engineering, the modification
of genes we pass to our children. The advent of human self-design evokes people's deepest
fears about today's revolution in molecular biology, but it is its logical endpoint. We
are not spending billions to unravel our biology out of idle curiosity but in the hope of
bettering our lives. Judging from the past, once we learn to enhance our biology in
meaningful ways, we will. Just because something can be done, does not mean it will. But
any technology that will be feasible in thousands of labs and sought by large numbers of
people with significant resources is inevitable. The question is not whether parents will
use their technologies, but when and where, and how openly. Some still cling to the idea
that government could stop all this. But attitudes are too diverse, borders too permeable.
If a Berlin couple takes a honeymoon to the Caribbean and gives birth to an unusually
bright baby 9 months later, what is the government going to do? Will it run genetic tests
and arrest the parents if the baby's genes seem manipulated? Such possibilities are more
repugnant than the pregnancy could ever be. Moreover, bans will merely drive the
technology underground and limit access to those with resources to circumvent them, hardly
a sensible course if we are worries about potential inequalities from the wealthy buying
superior talent for their children. Two key developments are necessary before
"designer" babies become a real possibility: a safe, reliable way of placing
genes into human chromosomes, and genetic constructs worth putting there. Several
companies have already incorporated rudimentary artificial chromosomes into human cells.
Their interest is in drug delivery and gene therapy, but the transition to human embryos
will not be hard.
No genetics constructs yet exist to tempt
prospective parents, but the Human Genome Project's completion is a beginning not an end.
The blistering pace of genomics, bio-informatics, and DNA-chip technology will soon reveal
many genetic contributions to the essentials of who we are. Most will be too complex to
manipulate, but some will be surprisingly simple. Will geneticists find ways of delaying
the onset of aging or enhancing human intelligence? No one imagined a decade ago that a
lone genetic mutation could double the fruitfly's life span, so who knows what will be
possible when clusters of genes can be controlled. Cloning-the birth of a delayed
identical twin-is strange, but hardly challenges our basic concepts about what it means to
be human. When we begin to consciously specify and modify our children's genes, we will be
moving into uncharted waters. Germline engineering will arrive not from mad scientists
bent on designing a master race, but as a natural spin-off of the mainstream biomedical
research we all support. Scientific progress itself would have to stop to block its
arrival. A few countries might temporarily pull back, but this will simply leave such
research to less squeamish nations. If germline engineering proves too dangerous or
ineffective of course, the issue will simply fade away. The real challenge will come not
from technical failure, but from success-genetic engineering that brings safe, reliable
enhancements that we can't resist. The idea evokes a painful eugenic specter from the
past, but there is little justification for maintaining that reproduction is a sacred
realm we should have untouched. As we gain increased control over human reproduction, we
will face choices that many of us would prefer to avoid. The key thing to realize about
these future developments is that today we are all operating out of profound ignorance.
Given such uncertainty, bans are a perilous course because the underlying technologies
will continue to advance and the likelihood of broad untested applications will grow. Once
these technologies are safe, we owe it to future generations to explore them cautiously
while they are immature. The way the mistakes will happen while few people are involved
and we will have time to learn from our mistakes to figure out how to manage the
technologies wisely. Categorical assertions about "our right to an unaltered genetic
heritage" ring hollow. It makes more sense to reserve judgement, see what develops
and deal with the opportunities and dangers as they arise. It is a long road from early
research demonstrations to broad clinical implementation. Procedures like cloning, broad
pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, and germline enhancement will remain difficult and
expensive, and unlike nuclear weapons, they pose no meaningful threat to innocent
bystanders. The only families at risk will be the few informed, affluent and committed
couples driven to try these technologies. Why all the angst about stopping them? To those
who say we must not play God, I submit that we already do, every time we use
contraceptives, transplant a kidney or put a satellite in space. As we gain control over
ever more that was once beyond our reach, we must take responsibility for our growing
powers. Pretending that genomic and reproductive technologies are not going to come
together in a potent union is neither in our interest nor in that of coming generations. I
suspect that when future humans look back on our era, they will view it as a challenging,
difficult, amazing moment when the very foundation of their world was laid. They may also
see it as a strange, primitive time when people lived only 70 or 80 years, died of awful
diseases, and conceived their children outside of a laboratory, by an unpredictable
meeting of sperms and egg no less.
The author, a biophysicist, is Director
of the program on Medicine, Technology, and society at UCLA's School of Medicine, Los
Angeles. Text courtesy: Deutschland E4 N2 2001, April/May. German Embassy, Kathmandu. |
