Paris:- Saturday, 1. February 1997:- Last Tuesday the debate about ending the conscription of all males born in France into the armed forces got underway in the National Assembly. The government has announced its desire to have a purely professional defense force.

Military bases are already being closed down around the country and local communes are coming to grips with the loss of the revenues they provide. They are also massive layoffs foreseen for the armaments industries, which I have mentioned earlier in this column.

But the end of conscription is a particularly emotional issue that is closely tied to the idea of the republic, and will result in a heated debate in public about whether to eliminate conscription, or merely 'suspend' it. Also, the idea of 'national service' is not dead, and there will be considerable discussion about what form this will take in the future.

For example, national politicians do not want a horde of people about whom they know nothing. With conscription, everybody got counted, registered, documented, put into a database.

So one of the elements they are talking about is how long a time is necessary to get these details - for whatever use - and they are even talking about 'number of days.' Is five days time enough to get a kid's name? Should they do it at a military installation, or can it be done in a local town hall?

Each political party is about to take a different position on these issues; as such it is a good demonstration of the need for several parties - so each can have its own view of the details, even if they all agree on the general principle. This sort of work is relatively harmless.

When it is complete, the administration will create more of itself to manage the whole thing - and then, it will put it into action in such a way as to make life miserable for the kids who have to have anything to do with it. Because of the 'principles' invoked by the politicians, there will be no chance that 'they' could simply say, 'Stay home, don't register, get a job!'

This is not so far-fetched. The armed forces are already spending public money to actively advertise for recruits.

Follow-Up to Employment Action

Le Parisien's '6,000' classified work-wanted ads have already paid off for some of the people who inserted the free ads. The ads, which ran over 25 pages in the paper's Ile-de-France and National editions for two days last week, are considered by the paper to have been 'better than any news report' about the problem.

In Wednesday's edition, the paper presented the stories of six advertisers. If they have not actually been hired yet, all of them at least got several calls and are set up for meetings with possible employers.

These six are described as people who are registered with the employment office - the ANPE - and several of them had made paid want-ad insertions before. In Le Parisien's action, each of them were merely one of 6,000, so I have to assume that a number of employers who need staff do not deal with the ANPE or do not normally read ads inserted by people looking for work.

The early-week editions of Le Parisien carry most employer-inserted want-ads, with Monday's - in this particular case, their Yvelines Edition - having seven pages of them.

I know it is the quality of the jobs offered that counts, not the number of offers, and I do not want to bore readers with this subject. On the other hand I do not know of any particular reason why the official unemployment rate is nearly 13 percent of the work force in France.

At the end of 1996 there were 3,092,500 registered unemployed in France; up 84,239 over the end of 1995.

The President Inspects High-tech Job-search

Last Monday President Jacques Chirac paid a visit to the Annexe of the Boulogne-Billancourt Mairie to inspect the 'Espace Cyber Jeunes,' a pilot Internet job-seek facility set up by the ANPE.

During the report on TV-news Monday night I did not see the fellow I talked to there while doing the feature 'In a Worker's and Architect's Paradise' that appeared in the Monday, 20. January issue 2.03 of Metropole.

The President has made employment of young people a personal priority and is not happy that one of his initiatives, launched in December, has not floated into visibility. With apparent French indifference to the Internet on all levels, it is hard to imagine a couple of wired PCs in every ANPE agency making much of an impression on the problem. Simply being 'wired' is no use if there's nobody to be 'wired' to.

According to Le Parisien's Tuesday report of the visit, the President must have been shown all the job-search sites that could be reached - outside of France. He caught on quickly because he is reported to have said that the young unemployed should be prepared to 'not have fear to leave' [the country]. And Le Parisien translated this into the headline, 'Chirac Wants to Send the Young Out of the Country.'

Here Le Parisien is being more populist than thoughtful. The European Community actively promotes job-search across borders and workers have free access to any country in the Union. Mr. Chirac himself is rumored to have worked while studying in the USA, in a fast-food joint.

Increased Net on January Salary Slips

The government has been fiddling with taxes; reducing old ones and adding new ones; shifting francs or centimes from here to there; just all part of a plan so grand that no single person alive in France can understand the whole of it.

The result does show up on payslips for January, and everybody who receives wages should have a little bit more to spend in February - from maybe ten francs more to 80, or possibly 1,300 francs more on account of 'regularizations.'

Experienced payroll operators characterize the system as 'delirious.' No matter what one's annual salary may be, for any two months with the same amount of time worked, the net sum to be paid will not be identical.

In effect, there has been a general tax cut, and this will be reflected in the bill for the first 'third' which arrives soon. Most employees do not have income taxes deducted at the source, nor do the French care too much for the public trasury's generous offer to let one pay monthly installments.