What on earth is wrong with the French?
 

Now that I've got your attention, perhaps it would be good to give a brief explanation of why a lot of French youth and numerous other workers are in an uproar about the "first employment contract." If you are inconvenienced by strikes or demonstrations on a trip to Paris, perhaps you will have a certain understanding of the issues.

This new law is supposed to make it easier for companies to hire young people, who have a very high unemployment rate. The big attraction for employers is that the "trial period" is two years long and the contract can be terminated during that time without giving any reason whatsoever.

First of all, this was such a wonderful idea that the government decided to pass the law without debate by using "article 49-3" which says that certain laws can be passed by a snap of the fingers when democratic debate is a bother. So be it.

Then, people started to think about the implications of this new law in terms of the labor code, which is one of the bastions of French society.

The labor code protects workers from being dismissed for a variety of reasons, among which :

-- resisting sexual harrassment
-- pointing out safety violations to authorities
-- becoming pregnant
-- real or imagined homosexuality
-- requesting payment of overtime hours
-- health conditions such as being epilectic or HIV positive

Naturally the list goes on and on. As per the new law, none of these protections exists anymore for young people being hired using these contracts since no reason for dismissal needs to be given.

The international (and some of the local) press has been saying that defending the labor code is proof that French workers are conservative and are unable to adapt to the modern world.

So that's the deal.

Kerouac, thank you for explaining this in better, more understandable detail than the news media has. I now can see how this has the potential for abuse.

The press which I read said this law is indicative of a government which finally wants to change and move away from the cradle-to-the-grave job "insurance" paradigm.

The new law is supposed to make it easier to FIRE people.

Ending a trial period is not considered to be a firing.

I spent several months each year in Paris and will soon live there 50 % of the time. I am so tired of hearing the American press criticize the French youth and depicting them as not wanting to work. Your explanation of the new work rules is accurate and the French youth are entirely justified in their protests. Of course there are always a few who take the opportunity to just cause trouble; but this is true throughout the world including the USA and not just France.

I fully expect the proposed work rule changes to be dropped very soon now as they should be. I just left Paris last week and 99% of the demonstrations and demonstrators were entirely well behaved.

Larry J

I haven't seen any criticisms of French youth not willing to work. What I have seen are reports of a government trying to remove some of the country's strict job protections which have been characterized (by the government) as "holding the country back in global competition."

Kerouac you can sweeten it all you want but please explain the difference to the let-go worker between "ending a trial period" and being fired.

I think this misses the point. Regardless of how the French student/worker feels about the new law, the reality is high unemployment & the low rate of job creation. Secure older workers remain in their jobs, resulting in few job openings. Employers don't fill new jobs because, for one reason, they fear being burdened with an employee they can't fire in a slump. (Yes, I'm oversimplying this, but it's the nub of the problem.)

The French have apparently decided they want government-guaranteed job security regardless of the impact on the overall economy. That's their right. But they shouldn't pretend that market forces can be ignored. Unemployment will remain high and those same students will continue complaining about the lack of jobs.

Kerouac:

The central bastions of French society (at least defined by the "liberty, equality, fraternity" myth) are that the state can afford to pay for the solidarity glue that holds it together, and that the private sector is healthy enough to provide employment and a tax base.

But why should any employer hire anyone in France if it's virtually impossible to fire them without paying a fortune in compensation? Employers will (sorry: do) simply invest in labour-free expansion, or move their investments to less regulated countries. Like the country 20 miles from your over-protected shores that all your brightest kids are fleeing to.

Shout, scream and cry for their mummies as much as they like - nothing these students are doing is making any employer, anywhere in the world, more interested in hiring Frenchpeople in France.

But it's creating the most talented stream of French economic refugees to London we've seen since the French Revolution.

Carry on with your 18th century fantasies. It's improving the quality of British life no end.

"Your explanation of the new work rules is accurate and the French youth are entirely justified in their protests."

The new work rules will make it easier to take on a youthful worker without the prospect of being saddled with a bad, lazy or simply unsuitable employee for his or her life.

Think of it as a chance to date someone before marrying.

I've heard it said over and over that while the rest of the world (particularly Americans) live to work, the French work to live. As long as their view of work is that of something so awful that it must be "imposed" upon them only four days each week, and that each job is a lifetime commitment, their economy will continue to suffer.

If so many of the French view their jobs as sheer drudgery, perhaps the greater freedom to move between jobs and careers would give them a more positive outlook on the nature of work--i.e. that it should be personally fulfilling. Greater mobility between jobs and careers would also break up what is now a de facto class system based on one's job. . .

I thought Kerouac s presentation of the issue was both complete and very balanced. Certainly no basis for the spray of derision in the latest post.

PS: What I cannot understand is how, with such rigid employment laws, France is able to provide SO many (not all) people with SO high a standard of living, including remarkable social services.

As a social and macro-economic outcome, it is certainly not perfect but I would take it over the US outcome, any day.

Sorry, another poster slipped in while I was typing: The spray to which I referred came from Cotswoldscouser.

I understand the law only applies to workers under 26, so let me see if I've got this right:
a 24 year old masters graduate gets a job, works hard, and 23 months and 23 months and 3 weeks later is fired for no reason. His boss then hires another 24 year old masters grad to do the job for the next 23 months, and so on ad infinitum.
Now, what happens to all the 26+ year olds who want to work? Presumably the jobs they could be doing will go to those under 26, who will be fired just before they complete their 2 years. This helps the French economy how exactly?

tedgale--I guess you haven't visited the depressing areas that surround Paris and other French cities. In the USA the slums are mostly in the cities; in France they are mostly in thesuburbs. Social services for these people are about as effective as those in the USA. In other words, crummy.

If it is indeed the case that the CPE removes all protections, I can understand the resentment, though of course there must be plenty of people with an axe to grind against the government from the left (and I suspect not a few on the right specifically trying to make the Prime Minister look as incompetent as possible, to the benefit of the Minister of the Interior who can play tough in the face of demonstrations).

Even in the UK, I believe some protections are absolute from the outset, and most kick in after six months. What may be different is the financial cost of social security contributions (or equivalent) and levels of compensation for redundancy (which is effectively nothing for less than two years' employment) and unfair dismissal (where I think compensation is capped).

A "complete and balanced presentation?" Not quite. A viewpoint of many? Yes.

kerouac- under the current system, how can an employee be terminated and by what grounds? How expensive and lengthlyis the process??

<i>What I cannot understand is how, with such rigid employment laws, France is able to provide SO many (not all) people with SO high a standard of living, including remarkable social services.</i>

The answer is right there in your comment (the &quot;not all&quot; part). The employment laws have created a society of &quot;winners and losers&quot;. The winners have it good: job security, social services, etc. The losers are the young people waiting to join the club (but there are no openings!).

Choosing winners and losers is not one of the things government does well. It looks great when the laws are being passed, but---voila!---the long term consequences have a rude consistency to them.

jeanne is right on.

too many (usually north american) franco-philes here have an unbalanced view of france. the view from their cafe seat paints a fairy tale picture.

the fact is that there is a major lack of opportunity for young people. having worked part time in france for years, this was easy for me to see. as scouser says, many of the very best flee to shores with more opportunity (UK or US usually).

france does have some very powerful international companies but the overall attitude is inward looking. look at chirac and his tirade when that french business leader spoke english in the EU assembly. english is the language of business in case he doesn't know.

tedgale:

Call a blast of common sense a spray of derision if you like.

But all the explanations of the liberty etc myth in the world don't solve the basic problem.

French students have fewer job opportunities on graduation than their peers in English-speaking countries. Flawed or not, de Villepin's proposals seek to improve those opportunities.

These posturing adolescents are simply making it even less likely they'll get a job. And what on earth is the point of that?

Thank you K.

I have been searching the web for the provisions of the new law and only get descriptions of the protests.

Can you give us some sites where we can find the provisions?

((I))

Ira, there's a good explanation in French here:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrat...%A8re_embauche

and a BBC news Q&amp;A article here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4816306.stm

However you cut it the facts are the facts.

Youth unemployment is 20%. In some of he depressed suburbs 40%, and within groups within that 40% there are groups where having a job puts you in the minority.

Why won’t French companies employ their young people? There are lots of reasons (some of which will sound familiar to British readers). Firstly the education system isn’t turning out work-ready teenagers. It is producing ill educated, badly disciplined slobs who know all their rights and none of their responsibilities.

Secondly the education system is giving people an unrealistic idea of their life chances – ie they can all be architects, vets and lawyers. France still has some good technical training institutions, but they are increasingly in a minority.

Given the basic unemployabilty of French youth, employers taking them on are committing a large number of resources in training, mentoring and developing these kids into good workers. They want the ability to get rid of those that won’t make the grade. That doesn’t mean that they will fire all the kids – they’ll keep the ones they have invested in. They’d be mad not to.

It is, if nothing else, a way into the employment market for youths. And isn’t getting fired from a few false starts in your youth a right of passage? (I think back to my own initial training as an accountant and am VERY glad that in Britain they could tell me to do something else as I was useless at accountancy).

It’s all academic anyway – the French government always capitulates to the mob.

It is true that certain countries can afford to contest unpopular policies more easily than others, since even their unemployed eat, receive health care, lodging and education, etc.
Although Wikipedia sometimes is not entirely accurate, the percentages below the poverty line that they indicate for various countries is interesting.
United Kingdom 17%
Canada 15.9%
United States 12%
France 6.5%
While I am a firm believer that idle cultures are decadent, I think that there might be an enormous upheaval in progress for the number of people who need to work -- when I think of all of the automatic, self-operated, robot-built items of our everyday life in our rich countries, I have to admit that I often wonder how we can all possibly expect to work as much as we have in the past -- and why would we want to? But that is a whole other debate.

Why does this somehow remind me of the way local banks operate here. I have a number of friends in banking. They tell me the usual situation is that they need a handful of &quot;executive&quot; types and supervisors to move up the chain. But what they really need are dozens of cashiers. At my bank I rarely see a cashier more than a couple of years. They are really pretty low paying jobs, and the ones who aren't &quot;material&quot; for moving up the ladder end up moving on or getting dismissed. And who is hired in their place? Another young person with no training that receives very low pay. There is no reason to pay bank clerks a lot of money and increase their salaries annually because there is a big supply of fresh new ones waiting to work for those base salaries.

OK, I know this isn't quite the same thing, but it doesn't sound that different either. A French company can now hire the cheapest help, and once they would normally start costing the company more, they can get rid of them and hire somebody else young and new to do the same work for less. Pregnant and need to be paid a maternity leave? Just get rid of them and then you won't have to pay them, for example.

&quot;young people...have a very high unemployment rate&quot;

Which is the say 23%. The overall unemployment rate is some 9.5%.

What the original poster fails to note is that current French law makes the dismissal of an employee, even for the most egregious of personal causes (faute grave), a potentially long drawn out process with many layers of legal appeals thru the courts. If upon review the cause for a discharge is found inadequate, the employee has a right to an indemnity of at least six months salary. Even when fired for anything short of the most serious of causes, a discharged employee receives substantial benefits at the employer's expense.

If this new law is such a wonderful idea then why did the government choose to institute it administratively rather than by the legislative process thru the Assemblee Nationale?

Probably because they wanted to get something done about the disastrous economy without subjecting the proposal to a tendentious debate in a body where every thought is directed at the next election (in 2007 at the latest) and where the Communists (currently 21 seats) and Socialists (currently 140 seats) are jockeying for power.

That may turn out to have been a poor political choice but it is not at all sinister given that the government has a clear parliamentary majority and there is no lack of public discussion.

No one seriously suggests that the purpose of the new contract is to allow employers to terminate workers for otherwise illegitimate reasons. The list given by the original poster is simply silliness. The purpose is to give some flexibility to employers, especially start ups, to roll with the economy.

Europe has long attempted to legislate prosperity and full employment. They have gotten neither. Sensible people in France know this and are trying some simple reforms to nudge the country a bit closer to the systems which have given the UK and Ireland much healthier economies.

But for some, reform is inconceivable. As one graffiti I saw spray painted on a wall a few days ago along the Boul' Mich said &quot;Utopia ou rien&quot; (Utopia or nothing). Such naivet&eacute; (or simple ignorance) may seem charming to some but should be a source of despair to people who wish to see France pull itself out of its economic malaise.

Just a quick, if perhaps ignorant, question, before this law, if I am 22 and in my first full-time job and I loaf around, come in late, leave early and am generally unproductive, am I somehow protected by the &quot;old&quot; labor laws?

Kerouac:

Thanks for explaning it so simply. :) I really appreciate it. And I completely agree with all the youth protesting the new law.. I myself, being 27, can appreciate their resentment of the idea of a two year trial period.. The world today.. isn't a fair or safe work environment for our young generation.

-Rachelle

Isn't it amazing how the years have changed expectations. When I started teaching in 1966, we were hired for two years on probationary contracts. We could be dismissed without recourse for those two years either because we weren't needed or because we were incompetent. We accepted this as the norm. Did we work harder because of it? You bet.

Thanks Hanl,

It would appear that, currently, all employees have a trial period of about 3 months.

This is much better than even teachers in the US, where the probation period is the first year.

((I))

Teachers in my area must work for 3 years on a &quot;temporary&quot; certificate, until they prove themselves to be good teachers and deserve tenure. One year is a thing of the past! That was when we had a big boom in births and classrooms needed warm bodies. It's not that way anymore!

The French are in economic denial.

Cradle-to-grave economic and social security is no longer possible. Somebody has to pay for the generous welfare promises, and low growth and high unemployment will not cut it.

The choice is stark and simple: change your labor policy now or continue to decline and lose influence in the world.

What is wrong with the French? The same thing that is wrong with most advanced democracies but in France it is further along.

Robert Samuelson in his Newsweek column in the April 3rd issue calls it &quot;The Politics of Make-Believe&quot;. Governments &quot;have made more promises than they can realistically keep&quot;. Woe to any politician who tries, even incrementally, to enact legislation that curbs these commitments.

France has one of the worst records of growth (1.6% annual from 2001 to 2005) and one of the highest unemployment rates. According to the OECD, unemployment from 1994 to 2003 averaged 9.9% among the 25 to 54 age group and 24% among 15 to 25 year olds (40% or so among the young Muslim immigrants). These are among the worst figures on the continent and reflect the untenable policies.

Tedgate, you might consider the current situation at GM as an example of how it is possible to provide &quot;SO many with SO high a standard of living&quot;. It wasn't possible. Now bondholders and stockholders are paying and maybe we will all pay to the PBGC.

Those who think companies will hire and then fire for no reason just before the probationary period ends must have no experience in hiring. You are forgetting the cost of training and the risk of hiring an incompetent replacement.

The subtext to all of this is the same tension that exists (and has always existed) between capital and labor.

In our own experience, when manufacturers enjoyed untrammeled <i>laissez-faire</i> capitalism throughout the 19th century well on into the 20th, they abused their power to the detriment of the workers. It was the era of Robber Barons, when a worker could be terminated for having a head cold.

This power imbalance gave rise to the labor union movement, whereby workers rationed their availability to secure concessions from capital adequate to live a decent life with job security. Arbitrary firing became a thing of the past. The problem that evolved from this redress in power was that Work Rules allowed workers who didn't contribute to the success of the enterprise to create jobs for life, in many cases without regard to competence or reliability. The number of companies that have been laid low by onerous union contracts are legion. The &quot;outsourcing&quot; of skilled jobs to the third world is another direct result of trade unionism. It's just labor price competition in a global economy.

It should be noted in this context that one of the principal reasons for capital's willingness to compromise with labor (which began on a large scale with the formation of the CIO in 1933) was the ever-present threat of collectivism rearing its ugly head. Management knew well that if they didn't bow to labor's demands, labor would find another way - such as it had in Russia by changing the form of government.

If there is any workable middle ground between the corruption of absolute power when held by either camp, it would be to make every worker an owner of the enterprise. But this solution has been demonized by capital, who have successfully associated in the popular mind (using little or no logic) worker ownership with totalitarianism.

As for the French - they might do well to look to the history of the USSR, where a total lack of feedback within the economic system sowed the seeds of ruin harvested in 1989. Central control doesn't work. A new model is needed.

The US, the strongest and most successful economy in the world operates mostly under an employment at will doctrine, meaning that either the employee or employer can sever the relationship at any time.

The US unemployment rate is currently 4.8%. The French are wise to move ever so slightly towards our capitalistic model.

The 'demonstrations' took an amusing turn these past few days with the november protest crowd (sensing a loss of attention) infiltrating the 'student/worker' crowd.... and beating them up!.
Would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
The place is doomed.

&quot;Just a quick, if perhaps ignorant, question, before this law, if I am 22 and in my first full-time job and I loaf around, come in late, leave early and am generally unproductive, am I somehow protected by the &quot;old&quot; labor laws?&quot;


Depends on how egrerious your behavior is(I'm assuming you begin behaving this way after the end of your trial period) . If you're only generally unproductive, or incompetent then you'll be fired for &quot;real and serious cause&quot; . Which means that you'll get a one to three months notice, and a severance package (probably not much since you're probably be fired in quick order) . If you drag your employer to a court, he'll have to show there was an objective and verifiable cause. &quot;He's generaly unproductive IMO&quot; won't cut it. Your employer might for example show that your sales are significantly lower than your colleague's sales.

If on the other hand you show up late to work every day, don't do the work you're supposed to do, etc... You'll be fired for &quot;serious fault&quot;, with no benefits altogether. In this case too, if you bring your case to a court, your employer will have to document the behavior that justified your firing.

The difference between the two situations, generally speaking, is that in the first situation, you're unable to deliver though by no fault of your own (you're just incompetent, you've been on a long medical leave, etc..) while in the second case, your behavior itself is being faulty.

There's actually a third &quot;level&quot; : the &quot;egrerious fault&quot; when your behavior is intended to harm your employer or at least is such that a reasonnable person would expect it to cause harm.

I would note that the courts that hear labor law cases in first instance (as opposed to appeals) aren't made up by judges but by elected representants of the employer's unions and worker's unions. So, they tend to have a rather pragmatical approach.

In any case, your employer will have to follow a procedure, in particular notify you in written form, mention the cause of your firing, and receive you in person (along with another person like your union representative, lawyer or sister-in-law if you so wish).

The above, by the way, assume that you've a permanent work contract (undetermined duration contract) as opposed to a temporary one.

The US unemployment rate is a very doctored statistic. It does not account for new workers not finding jobs in the workforce, anyone with over 6 months of unemployment, etc. It's a purely political number used to give the citizenship an overall good feeling. Critical economic decisions such as interest rate and other Fed decisions do not even consider the unemployment rate in their formulas.

When using what the rest of the world uses as unemployment the US runs about 9-10%.

That being said, The French are in a transitory period and are going to have to make some tough decisions about how they want to work their economy.

Thanks clairobscur. I have no idea the work ethic of French young adults, but if the ones we have with us are any indication, I think I'd want to be able to release them during a probationary period (which we do -- my firm has a 1 year probation period for all, regardless of age). So in that sense, I can see where the government thinks this will encourage hiring young workers, if there's an easy way to get rid of the unproductive ones.

But I can surely understand the anger over the other protections that the workers believe they are losing though. That just doesn't seem right. That is the part that isn't really getting any airtime here in the US, and should, to present a balanced argument.

Why should employers be forced to employ unproductive employees? It makes no sense. I read that the only way a business owner can dismiss employees is to go out of business. Is that waht happened to Samartine?
In my travels to Paris I have found that, like here, those in government sponsered jobs did not seem to care as much about their work as those in the prvate sector. The metro clerks strongly resemble our DMV clers. Why is that?

Hi cadillac1234
&gt;The US unemployment rate is a very doctored statistic. It does not account for new workers not finding jobs in the workforce, anyone with over 6 months of unemployment, etc.&lt;

&gt;When using what the rest of the world uses as unemployment the US runs about 9-10%.&lt;

Would you please cite your sources.

I am under the impression that the number of unemployed includes anyone over 16 who is not employed, available for work and has looked for a job in the preceding month. Those laid off or waiting to start work are considered unemployed.

((I))