Riots in France

By William F. Buckley Jr.
Fri Mar 31, 8:06 PM ET



Jean-Philippe Cotis is the chief economist of the OECD, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, based in Paris. His views, as one would expect, have been solicited in the matter of the extraordinary French paralysis that has resulted from the passage, by the Villepin government, of what they call the "CPE" -- which translates loosely as the First Employment Contract. What this reform says is that people hired in France who are under 26 years old can be dismissed by their employers within two years. For specific causes? No, for any cause.

There are laws in France, as in the United States, that prohibit a refusal to hire, or a decision to fire, based on religious, ethnic or sexual prejudice. But CPE says that, those prohibitions to one side, the McDonald's hamburger stand can dismiss a (young) employee without the need to file encyclopedic papers with various French ministries.

Everyone knows what then happened. A strike. At first, it was hoped that it would be a localized strike, young people contingently affected by the new law demanding protection from it. But oh no, the French these days like to strike on a grand scale. In 1968, one of those strikes immobilized the great Charles de Gaulle, and though he survived the immediate event, he was so weakened by it that not much later he resigned his office. President Jacques Chirac is already so weakened by policy confusion and personal corruption as to be something on the order of a lame-duck president. The principal political figure today is Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who plans to succeed Chirac in 2007, unless Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the tough challenger, beats him in a primary fight.

What the OECD chief economist said was that the embattled CPE law would actually benefit the majority of French workers because it would lend stability to the sickly French economy. Mr. Cotis announced grandly that he hoped that French unemployment would reduce from 9.6 percent to something under that, but that such an improvement would depend on fortifying the structural economic scene in France. To do this, one needs to give the market a freer play than it has when tied down by regulations that prevent production from adjusting to seasonal demands.

Cotis pointed out what one would hope would have been acknowledged intuitively, namely that inflexible employment contracts diminish productivity and augment genuine insecurity, especially for workers temporarily needed, who are not being hired because prospective employers can't make commitments that would jeopardize the future.

A staggering 30 percent of the French are inactive. This is outre welfarism. It is not diplomatic to make comparison with the United States, but Cotis did so, advising his European constituency that there are two models that work, the first being the U.S. model, where firing is easy and where "spontaneous" return-to-work is achieved. By that is meant that an American who loses his job finds another job within a reasonable length of time.

In 1982, during the U.S. economic slowdown, President Reagan professed dissatisfaction with the weekly reports he was being given by the Labor Department. He was being told, let us say, that 1.2 million people were out of work. He instructed his staff that he wished to be advised how many people, in the period under observation, had been hired. If 1.2 million have been out of work for six months, the picture is dire. If the figures for the month reveal that 100,000 lost their jobs and 100,000 were hired, then the question to ask is: How long were the afflicted without employment? A vigorous economy will accept losses if compensated by hirings. As the gross situation improves, periods of joblessness diminish.

The second model cited by Cotis is the "Nordic" model, which leaps in when workers lose a job and helps them find another job. Cotis, without saying so in as many words, was arguing the benefits of the U.S. model.

A striking observation on the entire question was made by a student leader. He said, with reference to the flexibility factor that the CPE reform sought to achieve, that he had no interest whatever in economic flexibility -- and went back to express himself on the streets with his picket sign.

There is little economic impact on Americans from French economic lethargy. Granted that nations less wealthy than they might otherwise be generate less demand --including demand for exported U.S. products. But that is small time, under the aspect of the heavens. What is big time is the sheer ignorance by a civilized nation of the rudiments of free and wealth-generating economic policies. Resorting to a strike in order to protest fundamental economic reform taxes the intellectual and spiritual vitality of freedom.

What is big time is the sheer ignorance by a civilized nation of the rudiments of free and wealth-generating economic policies. Resorting to a strike in order to protest fundamental economic reform taxes the intellectual and spiritual vitality of freedom.

Quote:

What is big time is the sheer ignorance by a civilized nation of the rudiments of free and wealth-generating economic policies. Resorting to a strike in order to protest fundamental economic reform taxes the intellectual and spiritual vitality of freedom.

I think, exactly this marks the differences between the "USA model" and our European view: not economy is here (still) the focussed center but humans and their rights.

We aren't as capitalistic as you are.

Chirac is issued with ultimatum over youth jobs law

By John Lichfield in Paris
Published: 06 April 2006
Negotiations began yesterday to resolve France's youth jobs law crisis but there was no sign of a rapid or easy settlement. With many universities blocked by the protests, exams looming and further strikes threatened, the government is desperately searching for a way to defuse the tension.

The centre-right government has already made it clear that it is prepared to amend - almost to the point of oblivion - a new easy-hire, easy-fire contract for the under-26s.

But with presidential elections 12 months away, the centre-right is rancorously divided on how much more ground it can publicly concede to student and trade-union protesters. Protest leaders made it clear, meanwhile, in a firmly worded statement, that they would accept only a complete and public climb-down by the government.

Even before talks with centre-right leaders began yesterday afternoon, a meeting of the 12 union and student federations issued a statement giving the government until 17 April to scrap the jobs contract.

If the government failed to meet this deadline, the unions and students warned, there would be more strikes and demonstrations. Student leaders also called for an intensification of campus blockages and more of the wildcat actions in which young people have blocked roads and railway lines.

In the first round of negotiations between ministers and parliamentary leaders, little progress was made. The government representatives put no new ideas on the table. They simply listened to the arguments of the union and student leaders, invited one by one to talks at the Senat, the upper house of the French parliament.

Some government figures - including its number two, Nicolas Sarkozy - have made it clear they would be content to sweep the table of the vexatious "CPE" law and start again. The Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, has said privately, however, that he will resign rather than completely disavow a law which he has vociferously championed as essential to the heath of the French economy.

At a press conference yesterday, M. de Villepin appeared to hint once again at resignation. He said he would "draw the appropriate conclusions" from the progress of the negotiations. Parliamentary supporters of M. de Villepin said there was no question of the jobs contract being abandoned.

The negotiations - requested in a nationwide address by President Jacques Chirac - were intended to "enrich" and "clarify" the law, not to bury it, they said.

The Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, the main centre-right party, is, however, deeply divided on this question. The majority - supporters of M. Sarkozy - would be content to see the back of the CPE (and for that matter M. Villepin). Many, loyal to President Chirac and the Prime Minister, are refusing to hand the left such a dramatic and public victory. There does not appear to be any room for a compromise between the two positions. Optimistic sources close to M. Sarkozy think the problem is largely "semantic". If a new law could be framed which removes union and student concerns - and probably the CPE title - it may be possible to persuade M. Chirac and M. de Villepin to cut their losses.

President Chirac had hoped his partial retreat last Friday would break the momentum of opposition. However, an estimated 2,000,000 people took to the streets earlier this week to call for the abolition of the jobs contract. The law would allow employers to hire people under 26 and fire them in their first two years without explanation.

Negotiations began yesterday to resolve France's youth jobs law crisis but there was no sign of a rapid or easy settlement. With many universities blocked by the protests, exams looming and further strikes threatened, the government is desperately searching for a way to defuse the tension.

The centre-right government has already made it clear that it is prepared to amend - almost to the point of oblivion - a new easy-hire, easy-fire contract for the under-26s.

But with presidential elections 12 months away, the centre-right is rancorously divided on how much more ground it can publicly concede to student and trade-union protesters. Protest leaders made it clear, meanwhile, in a firmly worded statement, that they would accept only a complete and public climb-down by the government.

Even before talks with centre-right leaders began yesterday afternoon, a meeting of the 12 union and student federations issued a statement giving the government until 17 April to scrap the jobs contract.

If the government failed to meet this deadline, the unions and students warned, there would be more strikes and demonstrations. Student leaders also called for an intensification of campus blockages and more of the wildcat actions in which young people have blocked roads and railway lines.

In the first round of negotiations between ministers and parliamentary leaders, little progress was made. The government representatives put no new ideas on the table. They simply listened to the arguments of the union and student leaders, invited one by one to talks at the Senat, the upper house of the French parliament.

Some government figures - including its number two, Nicolas Sarkozy - have made it clear they would be content to sweep the table of the vexatious "CPE" law and start again. The Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, has said privately, however, that he will resign rather than completely disavow a law which he has vociferously championed as essential to the heath of the French economy.
At a press conference yesterday, M. de Villepin appeared to hint once again at resignation. He said he would "draw the appropriate conclusions" from the progress of the negotiations. Parliamentary supporters of M. de Villepin said there was no question of the jobs contract being abandoned.

The negotiations - requested in a nationwide address by President Jacques Chirac - were intended to "enrich" and "clarify" the law, not to bury it, they said.

The Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, the main centre-right party, is, however, deeply divided on this question. The majority - supporters of M. Sarkozy - would be content to see the back of the CPE (and for that matter M. Villepin). Many, loyal to President Chirac and the Prime Minister, are refusing to hand the left such a dramatic and public victory. There does not appear to be any room for a compromise between the two positions. Optimistic sources close to M. Sarkozy think the problem is largely "semantic". If a new law could be framed which removes union and student concerns - and probably the CPE title - it may be possible to persuade M. Chirac and M. de Villepin to cut their losses.

President Chirac had hoped his partial retreat last Friday would break the momentum of opposition. However, an estimated 2,000,000 people took to the streets earlier this week to call for the abolition of the jobs contract. The law would allow employers to hire people under 26 and fire them

Lash wrote:

Seems to me, they (the ones who rioted before {was that February?} will be in the streets if the white students et al get their way.

Concerns of a race war...

Such - as to be expected - didn't happen: neither a "race war" nor did the students "gte their way".

And as the posted photos prove ober the three weeks time since that original reponse by Lash, it weren't "white students" but French pupils and students ...

The French government ALWAYS gives in to demands from their own people.
It is BECAUSE they cave in every time, that their people demonstrate at the drop of a hat.

Lord Ellpus wrote:

The French government ALWAYS gives in to demands from their own people.
It is BECAUSE they cave in every time, that their people demonstrate at the drop of a hat.

I believe, most governments do so.

I could recapitulate some from an island situated just offshore the European coast, but that would be another topic :wink:

School reforms? NHS?