France and Unemployment Insurance From 1920 To 1958

When the notion of unemployment was invented at the turn of the century, ¹ there was no legal definition of the term. ² Supporters of compulsory insurance existed in France ³ but they could not make their voice heard, as Léon Bourgeois noted in 1910 at the conference in Paris on unemployment: ‘We regret seeing so many ideas ‘conceived in France’ bear more fruit abroad than in France itself.’ ⁴ If this initial hesitation is understandable, the persistent inertia is surprising. Certainly France was less affected by unemployment than its neighbours. Cahen-Bernard noted that France suffered infinitely less from unemployment than England or Germany; for the interwar period, E. Weber emphasises: ‘The economic crisis hit Great Britain and Germany like a blizzard; in France it was experienced rather as an irritating shower.’ ⁵ In 1935 unemployment was three times worse in England and four times worse in Germany, not only because of differences in statistical measurement. ⁶ Likewise, the period of reconstruction that followed the Liberation was marked by labour shortages, not unemployment—reflected in appeals to the public by the tripartite government and, in particular, the Communist Party and the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT). ⁷