This morning
on the BBC’s “Today” programme, that I listen to over breakfast, the veteran
interviewer, John Humphrys, was asking a British economist why productivity in
the U.K is so much lower than in many other countries. The economist pointed
out that hourly productivity in France, for instance, is much higher, "because
the French work harder when they are at work, even if they have a shorter working
week and take longer holidays." To which Humprhys countered, only half
jokingly, "but the French are always on strike, aren’t they?"
Well, as it
happens, today they are. Or at least those who work in public services. This
being said, public transport seems to be running more or less normally, hospitals
will not be much disrupted and only schools and government offices seem to have closed down
completely for the day. A number of street marches are planned throughout the
country.
At first
blush then, true to form. A closer look however, reveals a number of seemingly minor but interesting
developments. First of all, the unions, traditionally strong in France’s
generously dimensioned public sector, are not united in their protests today, as
they so often have been in the past. The leaders of the three main unions will
be marching separately in different parts of the country. One union leader has even
gone on record as saying that street demonstrations are not perhaps the most
effective form of union action. Secondly, as "The Economist’s" Charlemagne pointed
out a few weeks ago ("Exorcising French demons"– "The Economist" - September 9th), the rounds of intense discussion
between union bosses and ministers during the summer holidays to prepare
the labour market reforms that are now being implemented seem to have toned
down, at the very least, the climate of confrontation that has so often characterised
relations between unions and the government, as well as between labour and
management in general. If all sides were now starting to realise that talking
to each other far from the media spotlight is, after all, a better way of proceeding
than carefully crafted one-liners destined for prime-time news or a show of force
on the streets?
It’s early
days yet of course, but there are other interesting signs that indeed, the climate
may be changing. I was surprised for instance to hear this morning on France Info, the 24hr. news and current
affairs station of the state broadcaster Radio
France, the views of Laurent Bigorgne an economist at the head of a think-tank
called the Institut Montaigne, renowned
for its economically liberal views and often a mouthpiece for France’s business
elite with a social conscience. It was unusual to hear its director general being
interviewed on a radio station that generally bends over backwards not to rock
the boat. It was even more unusual to hear him state a few home truths about public
service workers that one hardly ever hears on the mainstream media. Why are salaries
often lower in the public than in the private sector, the politically correct
interviewer asked? The answer, Bigorgne
said, although the unions would never admit it, is that a deliberate choice has
always been made to favour employment over pay, especially as one way of
increasing it, namely salary increases and advancement based on merit, has always
been taboo. He went on to say that, in any case, salaries are not the real
problem in the public services. They suffer above all from a lack of proper management.
Ask any public service worker in the street what they dislike most, he continued,
and the chances are they will tell you that they have no clear idea of where
their job fits into the general scheme of things and that it makes little
difference whether they strive to do a good job or not. They would probably be
much happier, he concluded, if they were properly managed.
I don’t think
I am the only one who has rarely heard this kind of language before in the
mainstream media. It reminds me not only of some of the cobweb-clearing
statements by Emmanuel Macron, on whom Bigorgne is said to exert some degree of intellectual influence, during his
presidential campaign but also of a conversation I had, long before Macron
became a household name, with a leading executive of a large French listed company.
He told me that he had started his career in the public sector but quickly became
disenchanted when he realised that his ability to get things done was severely
constrained by the lack of any real management culture, particularly in human resources.
For the
moment, such sentiments are certainly not in the mainstream and little more
than straws in the wind, but I suspect they go deeper than current political
correctness would suggest. If, however, they were
to herald a gradual cultural shift about what the state should do and how best it
can do it, they would indeed usher in profound changes to traditional French attitudes towards its public services. French people in general demand high levels
of public service, lament their deterioration, in some areas even, their slow decay
and applaud the generally high public service ethic of most civil servants. They
would never accept, for instance, the kind of root and branch overhaul of the civil
service that took place in the U.K under Margaret Thatcher or in countries like Canada, Sweden
or Switzerland. If however the view started to prevail, particularly among those
most directly concerned, that public services can be considerably improved by greater
efficiency and better management and not just by more investment and higher salaries, then France would have embarked on a real
path of reform that would surprise even the most die-hard believers in the myth
that “the French are always on strike!”
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