French youths protesting on behalf of their elders, and themselves

Theo Johnson is 15, and won’t retire for nearly half a century. Why, then, was he piling green plastic bins onto a towering barricade outside his high school in central Paris the other day, protesting the French government’s pension reform bill?

“At first I was protesting against the retirement reform, but then I realized it was more about a way of thinking and a culture where there’s less equality,” the lanky teenager said. “It’s not just the reform, but this government, which cares about the interests of the rich, and where only elites can find jobs.

“We think we’ll hit a wall when we get out of school.”

After a stormy month of strikes and protests, teenagers have led a national movement to block schools in a show of opposition to the unpopular pension reform bill, which would raise the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62. They promise to continue their protest, although both houses of Parliament have passed the bill, and President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to sign it soon.

They may be showing solidarity with their older compatriots, but for many of the teens, the motivation resonates closer to home. With unemployment estimated at 23% for 15-to-24-year-olds, fresh graduates can feel as though they’re on the outside of the job market looking in, and they don’t think the government is doing enough to help them.

“They aren’t only in the streets because they are worried about their future retirement,” said Jean-Baptiste Prevost, head of the largest student union, UNEF, as he led a protest march through Paris. “It’s not the future in 40 years; it’s the future in two years that they’re worried about.”

Granted, many teens join the protests as a kind of social rite of passage into France’s left-leaning tradition of political expression. They pose for news cameras, send photos to friends on Facebook and enjoy a break from the usual high school pressures.

“It is bizarre,” Isabelle Veyrat-Masson, a political analyst at the CNRS research institute, said of the younger generation’s involvement. Her 14-year-old daughter has been to every street protest, and refuses to attend classes.

“She’s not going to retire for another 50 years,” Veyrat-Masson said. “It really hit me to see these young people in the street protests. It’s an incredible sort of school recess.”

But others want to show the government their real concerns.

“They don’t listen to us,” said Theo, who also has attended every protest and is exhausted from it. “But it’s something I want to keep up with till the end … and people are noticing us.”

Younger people in France are more worried about not being able to find a good job than are many of their counterparts in the wealthiest countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to a 2006 study, said Anne Sonnet, an economist for the group.

French pressure to get a good diploma also “doesn’t provide much room for error, or second chances,” she said. “There’s this feeling that if you don’t succeed in your studies, you’re off to a bad start, and that you’ll stay there.

“There is a negative thought process among young people, who have no more confidence in the future, and they are too focused on the short term. So there’s an impression that the future is barred to them.”

And to many of the protesting teens, adults — and the government in particular — are the ones doing the barring.

Sitting on top of a recycling bin in front of the entrance to Turgot High School, Felix Mathieu, 15, smoked one cigarette after another, his shoulders in a cool hunch.

At first he was sure he didn’t want to work a day longer than 60. But on further probing he admitted to hopes of becoming an entomologist, and he might not mind having to do that into his later years, “as long as I don’t become a drag on young people who need jobs,” he said.

Although economists disagree, young protesters against retirement reform believe that by making elders work longer, even after the current economic crisis, there will be fewer jobs left for newcomers.

“But that is not true,” Sonnet said. “It’s an idea that people are perfectly substitutable. It is a simplistic vision of the economic market.”

Impressions of hitting barriers when entering the job market aren’t entirely made of smoke, however, and explain a lot about how French youths view, often with trepidation, their professional futures, experts say.

“One of the specificities of France is to have a major fear of losing your job, even though … that risk is not really higher than elsewhere,” said Alberto Lopez, director of the research group CEE. He attributes this fear to an entrenched system in which a person’s right to hold on to his or her job “isn’t really questioned.”

“That means that when you’re unemployed, it can be a big jump — bigger than elsewhere — toward finding a job,” he said.

Some students already worry about not being eligible for unemployment benefits before they’re 25.

“I know it’s strange to be thinking about that now, but it’s what we’ve come to,” said Doryan Kouschner, 17, another student blocking Turgot High. “People say they can’t find work, and need a diploma from a Grand Ecole [comparable to Ivy League universities in the U.S.], and that you can only get there through connections. It worries me.”

French parents and older adults, who according to surveys would rather spend less time on the job than their European neighbors, have contributed to the idea that work and pleasure don’t mix.

Lea Piccolo, 16, was shopping with a group of friends who hadn’t been active in the high school protests. She thinks that retiring at 60 makes sense, because she sees her overworked parents “suffer.”

But the idea that work is an inevitably heavy burden was not a feeling most of the youths protesting said they shared. Many simply hoped to land a stable job, while believing that 60 was a reasonable age to end a good career.

Gallene Katell’s eyes widened with excitement when she spoke of plans to run a day-care center. But when asked whether she would continue working after 60, she shook her head quickly.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” she said. “It’s about maintaining your good health. We don’t want to work more. You can’t do much after 60.”

Lauter is a special correspondent.