Is France going to be able to make the necessary reforms to allow it to compete in the world market, or is this the first sign of collapse? Are we seeing the start of a new French Revolution? Last year it was the Muslim workers. Now, college students (whose unemployment rate is 23%). If the Conservative government falls, will a liberal one just make matters worse? At what point will it all explode? Or is this just a ripple that will vanish in history, unremarked?
The ability to fire workers, either for practical reasons that the employee is not doing a good job, or for economic reasons that the company must alter it’s workforce, is absolutely essential to grow an economy. My cite would be The World is Flat where Friedman has a section on this, and makes a compelling case.
Employers don’t fire people for the sport of it. It costs money to bring people in and train them. So, an employer would much rather every one of their hires be perfect fits for the job and work for them for the next forty years. I’m not going to take a chance and hire someone, if I know that I’m stuck with them if it doesn’t work out.
My only concern with this law, as presented, is wouldn’t it put a disincentive for companies to hire those over 26? I have two candidates for a job, one over 26 and one under. All things equal, wouldn’t I hire the under 26 one knowing that if it doesn’t work out, I can fire him, whereas I’m stuck with the over 26 guy?
To more directly answer the OP, I see the French standing firm on this one. The furor will die down, and as unemployment decreases as a result, France will be ready for even further reform (you can fire anyone under 30…).
Also, to clarify, the laws being protested (from the CNN article):
“Under the law aimed at cutting youth unemployment, employers will be able to fire workers under 26 without giving a reason at any time during a two-year trial period. Opponents say that will create a generation of disposable workers with no security.”
Muslim workers? That’s stretching it, since one of the problemes that fueled the riots last year was the astronomical unemployment rates from the areas of the rioters. One of the things the laws which is not being protested against is supposed to help. And indeed, while the demonstrators this years, like to style themselves in the grand tradition of French popular uprising or a repeat of 68, it looks more like a march of the priviliged pampered middle class and the terminal stupid. I’ve heard that some of the rioters from the suburbs have turned upon the university protesters. That would be logical, since it’s their future they’re trying to worsen by opposing the new labour laws.
Well, I stated it that way since the majority of the Muslims in France emigrated there in search of jobs. “Workers” in a sense, although you correct in that what fueled the disturbance was lack of jobs and frustration. I hope the French government stands firm on this, and true reform happens. The alternative could get very messy.
The current unrest is what happens when Socialism meets the real world.
This, I think, is the crux of the argument. It used to be the case that there was a certain cost associated with training employees. These days many companies simply avoid doing any training, especially for employees with the really shitty jobs. That’s why workers on the lower end get less respect now than they did fifty years ago. Companies hire and fire at will, and have no reason to not terminate an employee without warning whenever they feel like it. At least, that’s how things work in the United States, and the protesters presumably don’t want such a system spreading to France.
What the French unions and government probably should do is seek a compromise. Instead of declaring firing to be absolutely off limits under certain circumstances, they should allow firing at all times, but with a generous mandatory severance package. That would still force companies to show some concern for the employees, without the danger of being locked with a bad employee for years.
But whatever they do, age discrimination is age discrimination. Treating employees below 26 different from those above 26 is guaranteed to spark anger.
In fact, I am surprised by the implication of the reports, that this would not be already the norm in France. Everywhere I’ve lived the law has been either:
(a) terms of termination are purely up to whatever’s agreed to in the employment contract (including “employment at will”), or
(b) there’s a legally mandated notice period and severance payment (proportional to income/seniority) for any employee to be subject to a “no-fault” dismissal. No need to create an age-based cut-off point.
Sounds to me like I’m missing something. Is it that the proposal would create a two-year window of absolute “employment at will” (no notice, no severance, no vesting of benefits) for anyone under 26? Could any French Dopers illustrate?
Student riots are a national pastime in France. They were burning stuff in the streets when I was just out of high school in the late 1960’s, and older French people were outraged. It happens periodically there. If I asked why, they would probably say, “Oh, Nott, you silly Americain. It’s a French thing, and you would never understand.” True, that.
French folks are okay by me, but I don’t claim to understand them.
Can we get some kind of cite to back up that statement? What specific kinds of jobs are you talking about that required training years ago but don’t now?
As for the riots in France, I’m wondering if this is just a reaction to an unpopular government. With luck we’ll be hearing from **clairobscure **soon with some local insight. That articles say that the youth unemployment rate is somewhere around 20%. That’s a lot of folks with a lot of time on their hands.
I know from experience where my employer previously would employ someone who had a Bachelors degree, will now employ someone with a dipolma in the same field. Why? because they can pay them less. If that’s not dumming down, I don’t know what is!
Such a shame we kept everything so civil last year in protesting howard’s “reforms”
If I could take back Post #9, I would. I didn’t check my facts, and in pursuit of a joke, I wrote imprudently. I’m sorry.
In his book Fast Food Nation, Eris Schlosser mentions that the fast food chains have whittled the amount of training they do to almost nothing. The purpose is precisely so that there’s no cost to turnover. Firing one employee and replacing them with a new employee now costs almost nothing, so where’s the motivation not to do so? If you don’t want to buy the book, the topic is briefly mentioned in this review. The punchline, of course, is that the fast food companies still get federal subsidies for providing training to workers who are moving off welfare, despite the fact that they’re not actually providing training anymore.
If an employee is free to quit a job at will and with no explanation, why should an employer not have the same right to quit the employee at will?
I rather wish they had caught on here . . . Seems to me the campuses have been pretty quiet ever since the Kent State shootings.
That’s definitely the point I can understand. If you’re going to allow at-will employment, it needs to be for everyone (ie all workers who don’t have contracts.) Setting arbitrary age limits is basically nothing more than discrimination. And while I think an employer being able to hire/fire with speed and based on economic necessity is good for the economy as a whole, discrimination is typically a moral wrong as well as being bad for the society which perpetrates it.
Looks as though I can give the first local insight. Though I’m not French, I’m a philosophy student in Paris.
While I often held nothing but disdain for American students’ seeming apathy towards any sort of mobilsation for whatever social issues, I’m am now seeing the complete other side of the spectrum and trying to sort out which one is worse.
Like Fiveyearlurker mentioned, I keep thinking of The World is Flat, not to mention Jeffrey Sachs, Joseph Stiglitz, etc.etc. I very often get the impression that the French view of “Anglo-saxon” economics is nothing but a whim of the greedy and the heartless. That major corporations are only good for the rich, and everyone who’s not a millionaire is just pawn.
The most maddening part of these prostest right now are the student strikes. There is nothing, it seems to me, more counter-productive and idiotic than impeding one’s (and others’) education. That doesn’t prove anything to the government. Needless to say, my school was blocked on Monday, and it will be blocked again on Tuesday (which is the day where there will be a general protest by workers and students, which consequently means that there will be tons of businesses all over France closed as well).
The saddest part about this is that when I read the paper, I realize that there’s a brain drain here in France as a result of all this. A report a couple of weeks ago by a Portugese group (working for the EU, I think) said that France and Germany are no longer world knowledge centers (I’ll cite this later, I’m in a rush) and that only two of the top twenty universities in the world are in Europe (Cambridge and Oxford, I think). The rest are in the US.
I had a professor break down in tears the other day when we told her that the school was going to be on strike. She told us that she had turned down a teaching position at NYU because she wanted to ameliorate the education system in France. She felt that it was hopeless.
Not only that. There are tons of international students here who are paralyzed. They can’t just make up this semester of study like the French can. I know some Romanian girls who haven’t been to school (at the Sorbonne) in a month! This is going to cripple her, and other students like her.
Not to mention, foreign students are going to stop coming to France. If we learned anything from the uproar from American universities after the post-911 visa situation became difficult, it’s that we need foreign brains, and I don’t think France is an exception.
I’m not finished. I’ll write more later. I’ve gotta run an errand.
One last thing though, I want to mention that there are a lot of French students against these protests and the campus blocages. They just can’t make as much of a bang as the other anti-CPE kids.
Got anything to back up that statement?
Like there are many of us 
yes, you’re missing something. There must be a cause in all cases in order to fire someone. It might be an economical cause, in which case, you indeed get a severance package. But you can’t fire someone “just because”. Well, you can, but the worker will drag you to court, and will get damages, besides the package.