Système D - The power of the people

In which Gerrit the shepherd takes on Pôle Emploi and wins

 Here’s a David and Goliath story to gladden the heart.

France is a land of paradoxes that don’t make sense to outsiders.  It has a rigid, unthinking bureaucracy which snuffs out businesses and blights the lives of its citizens.  On the other hand, millions of ordinary Frenchmen and women outsmart the system every day using guile and imagination.   

Even under socialist president François Hollande, there are no free handouts for a worker who voluntarily quits his job.  However, employees axed by the company receive lavish redundancy compensation.  Social security then provides up to three years generous unemployment pay.

The vital difference between these two extremes is one sheet of paper, the redundancy certificate known as an Avis de Licenciement.

Back in 2010 Gerrit Andriaensen was a shepherd from Dorres, a village in the Pyrenees.  Sheep farming had struggled for years against cheaper lamb imports from far-away New Zealand.  One December day his employer, the local cooperative, had to let him go.

Declaring someone redundant is not for the faint-hearted.  It involves months of statutory notice periods, consultations, recorded-delivery letters and formal meetings.  Gerrit’s employers didn’t do it.  Already three months behind with his salary, they acted too late and no longer had the money to pay him.

They just told him verbally that their flocks would henceforth be one shepherd less.  Gerrit was jobless and minus his salary, redundancy money and the vital Avis de Licenciement.

The trade union, Force Ouvière, helped him to start legal proceedings against the cooperative to obtain the missing paper and the overdue cash. 

All that would take months and he needed to eat in the meantime.  His next stop was Pôle Emploi, the unemployment office in nearby Prades. They refused to register him without the Avis de Licenciement.   That meant no unemployment pay.

People living below the poverty level were entitled to Revenu de Solidarité Active (RSA), a welfare payment designed to keep body and soul together.  Naively, Gerrit thought that having no income was the same thing as poverty. 

The government didn’t see it that way.  He couldn’t have RSA either because, well, he should be claiming unemployment pay, shouldn’t he?

Over a year later in February 2012 the legal battle came to a head. A tribunal ordered Gerrit’s former bosses to pay all that was due and issue the Avis de Licenciement.   Insolvent and unable to comply, the cooperative opted for liquidation.  Its managers were replaced by a liquidator.

Now the liquidator refused Gerrit’s request for the precious Avis because he hadn't made Gerrit redundant.  The cooperative’s managers did that before liquidation.  Time for a whole new legal battle. 

In August 2013, almost three years after the nightmare started, Gerrit finally received the backdated Avis de Licenciement.  His joy turned to anger as Pôle Emploi now declared his claim for unemployment pay to be invalid.  The Avis was years late.  It had expired.

The desperate lack of cash and the sense of injustice would not go away – “I’m at a dead end.  I’ve worked 30 years without asking for anything.  I feel hurt that they’ve treated me as less than nothing” said Gerrit. It was time for some people power, known to the French as Système D. 

Let’s roll forward to the present.  Gerrit decides to go to Paris and petition François Hollande, but he has no money for the trip.  Cafés, restaurants and hotels are all but a pipe dream.  

When in real trouble, a Jedi knight calls upon the Force.  Aborginal peoples summon the spirits of their ancestors.  If you're French and in the merde it's time for Système D.

Besides being a shepherd, Gerrit is a volunteer fire-fighter and a champion fell-runner.  He’s aleady won the Gran Volta de Cerdanya, a gruelling 214 km (133 mile) race through the Pyrenees.  Why not run to Paris?  It’s not far, a mere 900 km (560 miles) with around 18 nights sleeping rough in the middle of winter.

The union, Force Ouvrière, launches a publicity campaign and local newspaper, “l’Indépendant”, takes up the baton.  On 21 January Gerrit leaves Dorres and the paper tracks his progress in a regular column, publishing his mobile phone number.

Our Pyrenean shepherd descends to the Mediterranean and follows the coast north-east for a couple of days to Béziers before turning north towards Paris.  People phone to wish him well.  Along the route, journalists call as one local newspaper after another takes up the story.  Then a TV crew arrives and Gerrit appears on the evening news.  In the following days complete strangers seek him out with offers of food.

Six days into the journey things start to go wrong.  Gerrit only has what he can carry in a small backpack.  Under-equipped, he crosses the remote Plateau de Larzac in torrential rain which turns to snow.  His sodden sleeping bag becomes a death trap at night and too heavy to carry during the day.  He abandons it.

This bad news sets off an avalanche of support.  A fire-fighter friend drives a four-hour round trip bringing dry replacements for everything.   As Gerrit resumes the run north, towns and villages offer free meals and then, a bed for the night.  There’s no more sleeping rough.

Sometimes people join him and run alongside for a while.  Further up the bureaucratic food chain from the pen-pushers of Prades, someone notices and starts to wonder where this might lead. There's already too much publicity and the story's taking on a life of its own.

By the time this simple shepherd reaches Paris, his rag-tag bunch of supporters could become a cast of thousands.  François Hollande is already France’s most unpopular president since the Second World War.  The last thing he needs is a folk hero.

Two weeks after leaving Dorres, Gerrit is north of Clermont Ferrand and more than halfway to Paris.  His phone rings.  After months of intransigence, the Pôle Emploi has suddenly reviewed his case.   He can have his unemployment pay after all and they’ll backdate it to when he claimed.  You see, it was all a silly misunderstanding.  

 Oh, and a triumph for citizen power - Système D.

What have the Romans ever done for us? Well, there's the Pont du Gard

The story behind the Pont du Gard could easily have been a 21st Century one. It was a town planning drama which started in 45 BC when the Romans took over much of northwest Europe to create the colony, Gaul.

Within a hundred years, Nîmes had become a major centre in this new empire, a boomtown of 20,000 people. By 40 AD, the economic miracle was grinding to standstill for lack of water. The new affluence brought with it all the up market toys and luxuries of a consumer society. Unlike the locals, the Romans had baths.

Villas were no longer homes. They were executive homes with mains water. Soon, every square would have its fountain. Then new businesses and burgeoning administration attracted still more people from the countryside.

The local springs couldn’t cope with demand anymore. In today’s language, Nîmes was running out of bandwidth.

The nearest water supplies with sufficient capacity were in the mountains at Eure, some 20 kilometres to the north as the crow flies. But water follows the lie of the land. Avoiding the area’s twisted limestone hills and gorges would increase this distance to nearer 50.

At the heart of this civil engineering nightmare was a question - how to cross the valley of the River Gardon?

The scale of this enterprise is staggering even by today’s standards. Roman engineers designed a 50 km aqueduct which falls just 12 metres from beginning to end , allowing a smooth gravity-fed flow.

Local limestone was used to line the channels. Being porous, the stones were coated with mortar and lime to reduce water infiltration, parasites and root invasion.

Wherever there was a geological or topological obstacle the underground channel was progressively brought to the surface and continued on a support wall, arcades or over a bridge. To cross the River Gardon, they built the Pont du Gard.

At 49 metres, this is the highest aqueduct bridge ever built by the Romans and is remarkably well conserved.
It has 3 rows of arches: 6 on the bottom row, 11 on the second level and 47 on the top row. This is dry stone walling on a grand scale because the stones are precision cut to fit together – there’s no mortar.

Many pieces weigh over two tons and one wonders how they were lifted into position. The monument still bears traces of the project management of the work: numbering of stones, support points for scaffolding and lifting devices.

UNESCO declared the Pont du Gard a World Heritage Site in 1985. The site is now superbly serviced with multiple car parks, restaurants, museum, interpretive centre. There is excellent access for the disabled to the entire site. There’s also a network of footpaths and cycling trails so that visitors can enjoy not only the monument but also the surrounding landscape.

The 2000 year old pillars still bear the holes which held Roman scaffolding

Open all year round, the site is signposted from the A9 autoroute, exit 23 between Nîmes and Avignon.

Places to go: St Martin du Canigou in Pyrénées Orientales, Languedoc Roussillon

It’s an easy 40 minute walk up the public footpath which climbs 300 meters through a limestone gorge but it’s worth it. Clinging to the side of Mount Canigou, the abbey of St Martin du Canigou perches high above a ravine with breathtaking views over the eastern Pyrenees.

First built as a monastery around the year 1000 for Guifred the Second, count of Cerdagne and Conflent, the site was home to an order of Benedictine monks until 1786. It was abandoned and left empty for the next 120 years. 

Then the Bishop of Perpignan and Elne bought the ruins in 1902. The abbey was restored and extended twice during the twentieth century. 
 
Since 1988 it is home to the Catholic Community of the Beatitudes, a fundamentalist group within the Catholic Church. They’ve been likened to a cult, but they receive visitors, both tourists and also the more serious variety in search of enlightenment and repose.

The abbey itself is closed to visitors in January but offers guided tours throughout the rest of the year, except on Mondays. The situation, complete with a dramatic public viewing point is spectacular anytime.

The short 1.6 km walk to reach it starts from the village of Casteil, 3 km south from the picturesque spa town of Vernet les Bains. For those to infirm to make the climb, one of the brothers will happily descend with one of the holy fleet of Suzuki jeeps.

Not to be missed...

Photos: Martin Castellan