SIXTH INTERNATIONAL METROPOLIS CONFERENCE

WORKSHOP 45: Developing a policy to fight against discrimination: the role of employment mediators.

Wednesday, November 28, 2001
16:00 - 17:30

ORGANIZERS
Patrick AUBERT
Manager of the employment-training section
Ministry of employment and solidarity, Population and Migration Services
10-16, rue Brancion - 75015 - PARIS
Tel : 33-1-40-56-63-99 or 41-60
Fax : 33-1-40-56-42-96
Patrick.aubert@sante.gouv.fr

Jean-Paul LE DIVENAH
Deputy director of the Social Policy Fund
209, rue de Bercy - 75012 - PARIS
Tel : 33-1-40-02-72-99
Fax : 33-1-40-02-77-38
Jpledivenah@fastif.org

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

In all models of economic development there appears to be persistent ethnic discrimination in the work place, regardless of the post and constitutional or legal guarantees. The workshop will allow us to verify if this situation is widespread.

Based on this, it will carry out a comparative study on the models for the construction of public policies on this subject (a "Latin" model and an "Anglo-Saxon" model). The requested presentations will highlight the foundations that the different models have in common as well as the differences in the policies analysed.

In order to implement these policies, a group of employment mediators will be given a set of daily and practical problems that prevent normal practices from being applied. In France, for example, these are the ANPE (National Employment Agency) officers, temporary work agencies as well as centres of learning or professional training. The aim of the workshop is to illustrate the different approaches to the role and the methods used by the employment mediators and allowing the participants to employ the policies that appear most relevant to their own field of intervention.

It is expected that a critical analysis assessing these approaches will take place, in order that the workshop may be of clear use to its participants.

Furthermore, the comparative analysis of French and Belgian examples contributed by the speakers, and dialogues on ohter European experiences with the participants, will permit clarifying the impact of different national public policies in the practices of employment mediators.

DURATION: It has been suggested that the workshop should last for 1 and a half hours.

PARTICIPANTS

1. Presentation of the problem by Cyril Kretzschmar of Economie & Humanisme, France.

2. Exposé by Jean François Connan, ADECCO, France: a European temporary employment agency faced with racial discrimination

3. Exposé by Michel Vanderkam, Centre pour l'Egalité des Chances et la Lutte contre le Racisme (Centre for Equal Opportunities and the Combat Against Racial Discrimination), Belgium: the position of employment mediators confronted by the combat against racial discrimination; the Belgian approach in a European context.

Critical analysis by Olivier Noël, Institut Social Coopératif de Recherches Appliquées (Co-operative Social Institute of Applied Research), France: the professionalism of employment mediators and the combat against racial discrimination.

Debate with the workshop participants co-ordinated by Economie & Humanisme.

Curriculum vitae of the workshop speakers and the orientation of their contributions

Cyril Kretzschmar, Economie & Humanisme, co-ordination
Cyril Kretzschmar is forty years old and is general delegate of Economie & Humanisme, a French militant organisation that carried out studies into human and sustainable development (www.economie-humanisme.org). He has more than ten years experience in management consulting and human resource management. He organises consulting activities aimed at combating racial discrimination, co-ordinates the European project PRISME (For the Successful Integration of Multi-Ethnic Employees in the Enterprise) and is co-director of the film "Réflexion faite" (Reflection Done). He is expert advisor to the DPM, FAS, DIV, DIIJ and CODAC and also works on subjects concerning the fight against exclusion and discrimination, company ethics and the development of employment.

In introducing the workshop, Cyril Kretzschmar will attempt to identify the different problems that must be dealt with by employment intermediaries regarding the combat against racial discrimination in France and Europe. This concerns national employment and labour management agencies, temporary employment agencies, recruitment agencies, public and non-public structures that assist employment, consulates and labour unions, etc. These intermediaries can play very different roles regarding discrimination: they are in positions to identify concrete situations of discrimination and relay their knowledge to economic actors in the territory. They can also either hide or amplify the discriminatory practices of their employer "customers", assist the victims to become aware of their situations and conscious of their empowerment, and support public partners to implement their incentive or coercive policies. In the framework of the debate, he will make known the concrete proposals for networking and capitalising the experiences of employment intermediaries and link them with different national public and European policies.

Jean-François CONNAN, ADECCO, speaker

Jean-François CONNAN is thirty eight years old and has an Advanced Studies Diploma in Employment Management and Administration from the University of Paris 1.
He was a teacher before becoming an employee at ADECCO, where he became head of recruitment and then training.

He is currently responsible for social development with ADECCO's corporate management.

The department he manages has four orientations:
- combating discrimination (racial and handicapped persons)
- monitoring temporary workers
- integration via economic activity
- the social integration of temporary workers.

Since 1999, he has been responsible for ADECCO's plan to combat racial discrimination, started with the technical assistance of FAS. He will present this original experience for France, inspired in particular by the lessons learned by ADECCO and the Federation of French Temporary Employment Agencies in their programme to promote the employment of handicapped workers. He will mention the approach of the different subsidiaries of the ADECCO Group set up around Europe regarding the fight against discrimination. His exposé is also intended as a critique of the current limits to the commitment of employment intermediaries: the ideology of "the customer is king", subjective methods of appreciation in recruitment and of the risk regarding perceived differences, etc.

Michel Vanderkam, CECLR, speaker

Michel Vanderkam is 43 years old and trained as a social worker then sociologist (Catholic Univerity of Louvain). He graduated in the Management of Public Companies (post-Masters studies, Solvay School - Free University of Brussels).

He is currently co-ordinator of the Integration Policies of the Centre of Equal Opportunities and the Combat Against Racism of Belgium. He previously worked in the field of social policy and more recently in the specific field of policies on integration and the combat against discrimination of peoples of foreign nationality or origins.

The Centre of Equal Opportunities and the Combat Against Racism is a public service set up to propose, stimulate, initiate and assist the implementation of public policies on racism and discrimination. Michel Vanderkam will resituate the beginnings of this organisation and its specific role in relation with Belgian public employment intermediaries, such as employment agencies operating in different regions. He will attempt to show how these intermediaries must go beyond their traditional role and contribute towards formulating, with employers, new negotiations on job configurations in order to fight against discrimination in employment.

Olivier Noël, ISCRA Montpellier, speaker
Olivier Noël is currently a researcher-assistant in social sciences at the Social and Co-operative Institute of Applied Research (Montpellier, France), and was previously a researcher at the Integration Observatory (Montpellier, France).

His research, in particular for the Social Action Fund of the Ministry of Labour, mainly focuses on the problem of discrimination in employment affecting young persons with immigrant origins. This research has been the subject of publications over the last ten years (research reports, articles and communications).

This research takes up two thirds of his professional activity. The remaining third is taken up by teaching social and political sciences at the Université Paul Valéry (Montpellier III) where he has given courses in recent years in the framework of Economic and Social Administration with emphasis on social development. He is also responsible for course content in a post Masters degree on "social inter-mediation".

His critical analysis will focus in particular on the following thesis:

What roles can employment intermediaries play in the combat against discrimination in recruitment? To study this question from a new angle, it appears interesting to approach it from reference frames in politics and public actions that have genuine heuristic interest. When studying ethnic discrimination in employment, we are dealing with a phenomenon that is both a fact and a value. This leads us to raise two types of simple question:
- does ethnic discrimination in employment exist? How is it displayed? This measurement of the facts is an initial challenge to researchers in the social sciences, especially statisticians.
- If it exists, is it condemnable or not? This is another challenge to political sociology: that of studying the plurality of general reference systems at the basis of all public actions.
The advantage of using an approach based on reference systems is to highlight and study four levels of perception of the world (values, norms, algorithms, images) and better understand phenomena of justification, minimisation and even hiding ethnic discrimination in employment. And, on this basis, formulate argumentation capable of responding to these types of justification.