French local paper takes on Macron's 'go find a job' challenge
After French president Emmanuel Macron told the mother of an unemployed man that he 'could find 10 jobs' in Marseille's historic port area, the local paper decided to take him up on the challenge - and found 13 jobs.
Macron had faced a barrage of criticism after he told the mother of a jobseeker that her son could easily find work.
In a typically robust exchange during a visit to the southern city of Marseille, the president told the woman her son could pick up to "10 offers" if he walked around the city's historic Vieux Port area which is home to dozens of cafes and eateries.
His political opponents slammed him for minimising the problem of unemployment, but local paper La Provence decided to take him up on the challenge.
The regional daily sent a reporter out to the Vieux Port area of Marseille, and reported that they found no less than 13 job offers in one-and-a-half hours. The majority were minimum-wage jobs in hospitality, mostly seasonal for the peak summer tourist period.
Marseille's Vieux Port is the city's tourist hotspot, packed with bars, cafés and restaurants.
"What does your son want to work in?" Macron asked the woman during a walkabout in Marseille on Monday after she said her son, 33, could not find work and was in rent arrears.
"It does not matter... anything!" she replied.
Macron told her: "You are not going to persuade me that, if he is really looking for a job in Marseille, and that he is ready to take a job as a waiter, that there is no job as a waiter.
"I promise you: If I take a walk around the Vieux Port tonight with you, I'm sure we will find 10 job offers," he said.
But the new head of the CFDT union, Marylise Leon, warned the president that "things were not as simple as all that".
"What message is the president of the republic sending to people who are employed in cafés and restaurants - that they just have to knock on the door and get work?" she told BFM TV.
"It denies the skills and the difficulties of the working conditions," she added.
MP for the hard-left France Unbowed party Mathilde Panot said "Macron has become a caricature of Macron".
"Showing such contempt to people, the only unemployed person we hope for in the country is Emmanuel Macron," she said.
Macron, 45, a former investment banker, has already had previous controversial exchanges over job seeking, in 2018 telling a young man he just had to "cross the street" to find work and telling another man in May work was just "one metre away".
Since then, he has made lowering France's historically high unemployment level a policy priority - the unemployment rate in France currently is at around 7 percent, its lowest level since the early 1980s, although youth unemployment is higher.
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Macron had faced a barrage of criticism after he told the mother of a jobseeker that her son could easily find work.
In a typically robust exchange during a visit to the southern city of Marseille, the president told the woman her son could pick up to "10 offers" if he walked around the city's historic Vieux Port area which is home to dozens of cafes and eateries.
His political opponents slammed him for minimising the problem of unemployment, but local paper La Provence decided to take him up on the challenge.
The regional daily sent a reporter out to the Vieux Port area of Marseille, and reported that they found no less than 13 job offers in one-and-a-half hours. The majority were minimum-wage jobs in hospitality, mostly seasonal for the peak summer tourist period.
Marseille's Vieux Port is the city's tourist hotspot, packed with bars, cafés and restaurants.
"What does your son want to work in?" Macron asked the woman during a walkabout in Marseille on Monday after she said her son, 33, could not find work and was in rent arrears.
"It does not matter... anything!" she replied.
Macron told her: "You are not going to persuade me that, if he is really looking for a job in Marseille, and that he is ready to take a job as a waiter, that there is no job as a waiter.
"I promise you: If I take a walk around the Vieux Port tonight with you, I'm sure we will find 10 job offers," he said.
But the new head of the CFDT union, Marylise Leon, warned the president that "things were not as simple as all that".
"What message is the president of the republic sending to people who are employed in cafés and restaurants - that they just have to knock on the door and get work?" she told BFM TV.
"It denies the skills and the difficulties of the working conditions," she added.
MP for the hard-left France Unbowed party Mathilde Panot said "Macron has become a caricature of Macron".
"Showing such contempt to people, the only unemployed person we hope for in the country is Emmanuel Macron," she said.
Macron, 45, a former investment banker, has already had previous controversial exchanges over job seeking, in 2018 telling a young man he just had to "cross the street" to find work and telling another man in May work was just "one metre away".
Since then, he has made lowering France's historically high unemployment level a policy priority - the unemployment rate in France currently is at around 7 percent, its lowest level since the early 1980s, although youth unemployment is higher.
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