France Protest New Job Law

During a weekend that found the anti war movement unable to get a million people worldwide to demonstrate the French turned out 1.5 million to protest a law that would allow employers to fire a person under the age of 27 without cause during a two year period. This law needing to be passed means that the current situation forces employers to hold on to workers who may not be producing. The French minister who has pushed this law gives sound reasoning for the change.

Villepin pushed the new law as a vehicle to prompt companies to hire more young people at a time when joblessness among that group averages 23 percent and exceeds 40 percent in some poor neighborhoods populated by immigrants and their French-born children. Villepin argued that under existing labor laws, employers were increasingly reluctant to hire young people because of job protections that make it all but impossible to fire workers, even if they are incompetent.

Very basic principle here, but remember this is a country that tried to solve unemployment by shortening the work week to 30 hours but requiring the same weekly salary be paid. They hoped this would cause employers to hire more people. Obviously they didn't. As to this law, they simply were not hiring people they could not fire because there was no incentive for the worker to produce since there was no risk.

Taking a page from the Moslem riots of last year he mob turned out in force burning cars and pelting police with garbage. Too his credit the President Jacques Chirac has stood behind the decision of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. The unions have given an ultimatum.

The French government showed no sign of bowing to an ultimatum set by union leaders to withdraw a new job law by late Monday or face a possible general strike this week and further mass demonstrations.

Buoyed by protests at the weekend that organizers said brought 1.5 million people onto the streets nationwide, union leaders set a Monday evening deadline for the government to withdraw or suspend the First Job Contract (CPE) law.

Sixty present of the voters polled favor withdrawal of the law. Decades of socialism are about to wreck the French economy and the French people want to pull the throttle out to full speed as their government tries to put on the breaks. What's remarkable is that the French government even has a clue.

Linked by unconformed