France: fighting employment discriminations

Besides the riots that took place in october 2005 in under-priviledged urban areas, many new experiments for the inclusion of migrant populations, included people who acquired in the past the french nationality, are in the phase of implementation.

AEFTI Marne, a training center, set up in the nineties in Reims to respond to the needs of migrant workers, is pioneering a new scheme with the help of the European Social Fund ? under the aegis of the EQUAL programme ? to promote a new label ” Competences&Differences ” within the regional network of the craft industry. A partnership with two main actors ? UPA : Union for the craft employers and a migrant federation called CIAM ? was signed in july 2005 in order to test the impact of anonym CVs on recruiting methods by SMEs.

The project intends to demonstrate that employment shortages in some sectors of the economy could be overcome if competences matter really. Employment discriminations for race, religion, gender, etc. must be fighted to give full citizenship to anybody trained and educated living in France, according to the EU legislation. They also ought to be removed for economic reasons : allowing the incrementation of the employment rate in booming sectors which contribute as the craft industry to a local sustainable development.

At the European level, AEFTI Marne is working with two non profit organisations : ARCI in Italy, connected to ACLI and Compagnia delle Opere for this EQUAL project, and CEIM in Valencia in Spain committed to up-grade the professional profile of the multicultural mediator.