LR President of the Finistère Departmental Council since 2021, Maël De Calan makes the forced employment of the unemployed and RSA recipients a ruthless instrument to provide businesses with a precarious and cheap workforce. Deeply pro-business, it actively participates in the liberalization and destruction of public services through outsourcing of its missions and underfinancing, to the detriment of users, particularly the most vulnerable.
Maël De Calan, a profoundly liberal right-wing bourgeois
Maël De Calan is the son of Dominique de la Lande de Calan, a former industrialist, close to Alain Madelin and former number two of one of the oldest employers’ union confederations in France, the Union des Industries et Métiers de la Métallurgie . The UIMM distinguished itself judicially by the Black Fund Affair: several hundred million euros intended to counter strikes, notably through corruption because, according to Dominique de Calan, the “ climate of class struggle is harmful to the market economy “. De Calan fils is a right-wing politician who does not lack ambition since at the end of 2017, at only 37 years old, he ran for president of the Les Républicains party against Laurent Wauquiez and Florence Portelli. Early on, it was in his final year that he joined the RPR, then leading the UMP sections of the establishments where he studied: Sciences-Po Paris then HEC to end up responsible for the Young UMP of Paris. In turn Juppéiste then Pécresseiste, he failed in the 2017 legislative elections but won the presidency of the Departmental Council of Finistère in 2021.
His professional career shows his ultra-liberal, clearly pro-business positioning: financial analyst for the Merril Lynch investment fund in London then for the investment bank UBS in Paris and financial director in a biotechnology start-up in Roscoff, in Finistère. . A 2016 article in Le Monde described it as “ a sort of Emmanuel Macron whipped by the spray of the Atlantic “. A fan of revolving door and back door revolving door, practices generating conflicts of interest, he held the position of “associate partner” at McKinsey France between October 2018 and June 2021. He was therefore one of those who dictated in the ear of others. Olivier Véran and Jean Castex the logistical aspects of the government’s disastrous vaccination strategy during the Covid 19 epidemic, cutting public finances by $13,000 per day. As we denounced in a January 2021 article: “ the French bourgeoisie has always known how to alternate its political responsibilities and its financial interests, not hesitating to use independent firms whose members come from its ranks to better remunerate itself ».
Conditioned RSA experimentation in Finistère: the hunt for the poor has begun
When it was necessary to find willing departments to experiment with RSA conditional on 15 hours of weekly activities, Maël De Calan was quick to raise his finger. This follower of austerity, who was co-author in 2012 of a report from the Montaigne Institute entitled “ Public spending: 15 proposals to achieve 60 billion savings », saw it as a perfect opportunity to reduce the social budget of the department of Finistère. He does not hide his accounting management of precariousness, he proclaims it: “ Sources of savings have been identified, some of which have already been effectively implemented, for example: – The acceleration of the return to employment of RSA recipients, thanks to reinforced support and the increase in the number and the effectiveness of integration schemes, two levers which made it possible to reduce their number by 2,000 beneficiaries in 2 years (savings of €14 million) ».
He forgets to specify that this enormous drop in the number of RSA beneficiaries is also due to the creation of a service responsible for the fight against fraud and lack of mobilization. This ” reinforced support » implies putting pressure on social workers, ordered to flush out and denounce possible recalcitrants who thus risk suspension of the RSA and then deregistration. Maël De Calan’s objective is to reach 15,000 beneficiaries at the end of 2024 after reducing the number from 18,000 to 16,000 the two previous years. Data from the DREES (Directorate of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics) from August 2024 prove the “effectiveness” of this exclusion strategy: where in one year the number of beneficiaries of the RSA decreased by 1.4% at the national level, Finistère showed a decrease of 8.1%. This policy of exacerbated social control has devastating effects since 40% of beneficiaries removed from the RSA no longer request it. The dissuasive effect of sanctions thus drastically aggravates the poverty of the most deprived.
Social minimums in Finistère: a boon for bosses
The intention of the President of the Departmental Council is in fact not to help the precarious but, beyond the savings made, to help companies by providing them with very cheap and potentially docile labor because they are threatened with radiation. The objective of the elected official is to encourage or even constrain “ beneficiaries to work in professions in shortage, and to join integration projects and workshops “. Reading the deliberations of the departmental council proves eloquent as to the true aim pursued: “ It is also about being more effective in helping Finistère companies which are struggling to recruit to identify people who can contribute to the development of the local economy and the territory (…) the company is at the heart of the support (“job first” logic) and professional immersion an essential ».
To stimulate and control precarious workers, Maël De Calan called on a Parisian start-up, BimBamJob, which imposes entrepreneurial ideology with coaching sessions. Inviting the private sector to manage the social sector is to commodify poverty to the detriment of the working classes, it is to spit in the face of social workers and France Travail agents. This private subcontracting of the public employment service is increasing considerably, as Mediapart explained last September. The budget allocated nationally to subcontracting has in fact increased from 250 million euros in 2018 and to 650 million in 2023. The liberalization of the public service is harmful for users because private providers are encouraged to put pressure on them, their remuneration depends on the rate of return to employment of the unemployed, without consideration of the quality of this employment. The strengthening of controls also leads to “ a precariousness of job seekers through their introduction to precarious job offers ».
The vulnerability of people with RSA, often followed by social services due to complex issues relating to health, housing, family situation, etc., is not at all taken into account in this exclusively pro-employer perspective. Thus, while more than one in five RSA beneficiaries present a risk of depression, there is no doubt that the pressure put on them by the Departmental Council, allied with France Travail, will contribute to accentuate this risk. Integration professionals also highlight the contradictions of this policy: “ integration projects respond to a lucrative logic (which) is not always compatible with social support “. The budgets of the Finistère department are enlightening: aid to businesses to encourage the recruitment of RSA beneficiaries is 90,000 euros, while the territorial envelope to mobilize mental health care tools is 60,000 euros. This is what is revealed by reading the State/Departmental Council contractualization concerning the France Travail experiment in Brest.
Double standards in social policy and the Don Bosco struggle
But we should not believe that Maël de Calan is not in his spare time an ardent defender of social assistance, at least if it encourages the birth rate of the bourgeoisie. Indeed, this practicing Catholic is the author of a reactionary column, published in December 2017 in Valeurs Actuelles, where he advocates family policy as a vector of economic dynamism, complaining about the modulation of family allowances according to income. He is indignant, finding it unfair “ to demand ever more effort from the families who are giving France the children it needs “, that is to say families whose income is very comfortable. As for the poor families who, through the policy he is pursuing, will be removed from the RSA, should we understand that France does not need their children?
The Finistère elected official, however, shows less interest in children in danger. Indeed, the Don Bosco Association, which has taken care of child protection since 1946 and people with disabilities since 1974, in North Finistère, is forced to reduce its workforce. Due to a lack of sufficient funding, mainly from the Departmental Council, it is forced to carry out a restructuring which threatens the employment of 55 employees and the existence of seven structures. Currently in struggle, social workers are personally targeting Maël de Calan, as reported by Ouest-France: “ The president of the structure and Franck Monfort, general secretary of the departmental CGT union, both criticize a “political choice” on the part of the communities and in particular the Department, of which child protection is one of the ” sovereign functions”, recalls the union representative “. Under pressure, Maël de Calan announced an exceptional allocation of one million euros but the mobilization does not weaken, the CGT and SUD unions are calling for demonstrations on Wednesday October 16 in Brest because “ The balance of power pays off! But it must be amplified! ».
To put an end to unemployment which allows employers to put pressure on our class to accept degraded salary conditions, it is necessary to demand the distribution of working time between everyone, an increase in salaries as well as the abandonment of pressures and sanctions on the unemployed, especially vulnerable people who cannot work within the coordinates of capitalism. Expropriating the means of production and putting them under the control of workers would be the best solution to put an end to the subordination of employees to a boss who chooses who can or cannot work and under what conditions. While Michel Barnier plans a new major offensive against the precarious through a single social allowance which would combine several forms of aid to impoverish the poorest and a new austerity reform of Unemployment Insurance is being prepared, he It is high time to definitively break with the illusions of “social dialogue”. Social workers, France Travail agents, workers, the unemployed and precarious, the urgency is for coordination to organize a balance of power with a solid battle plan against the liberalization of public services and against employers supported by the government which is bending going out of his way to meet his requirements.
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