Actually, no. I don’t think a union could help me, and I would hate to be tied to one. If I worked in an industry with a union, I’d be more pissed at it eating dues from me than anything else, and would cheer at its demise. I work for me, and see myself as an independant contractor which various businesses hire. I am not their “employee”, worker, or laborer. I am an agent, contractor, or professional. And agents don’t like any third party stealing their income, government or union.
This is a point likely to be lost on someone who is used to a system where the government protects him across the board from bosses demanding complicity in criminal coverups, bosses demanding prompt arrival at work, bosses demanding sexual favors, bosses demanding courteous service to customers, bosses demanding kickbacks, bosses demanding competent job performance… it all sort of blends together into the tyranny of The Man. :rolleyes:
To be cynical about it, the university students who are doing the protesting have a rather better than 80% chance of not being among the 20%. Thus, preserving the existing system (where jobs are cushy if you can get one) is a better deal for them.
That might not be all that cynical. I wonder how many unemployed youths are taking part in the protests. *Make it harder to hire my unemployed ass, please! *
The thing is…do the FRENCH feel this way (i.e. that their protests are actually going to continue the trend of unemployment staying as it is)? From comments clairobscur has made I’d say they DON’T think any such thing. They think they are helping things out (according to my understand of what clairobscur is saying at least), or at least perserving the French work place.
How they can possibly think that is a mystery to me, but then much of what happens in Europe is a mystery to me. But appearently they do.
-XT
I find the French reaction to this totally predictable.
I used to work in a NOC and we had to deal with network issues that affected our French users. Dealing with the French NOC was absolutely mind-blowing. They didn’t do jack, they would disconnect calls during emergencies because it was time for their break, they would hang up and leave when their shift was up even if they were in the middle of something extremely important. Everyone in the NOC hated working with them because they didn’t get anything done, wouldn’t take responsibility for anything and were down right rude on top of it all. Working with them sucked. None of the French workers I dealt with would have lasted a week had they done the same job in the US.
I can understand why they are angry, they are faced with losing basically guaranteed employment (those who have jobs, that is), five weeks of vacation a year (!!!), a 35 hour work week and a damned good chance of winning if their employer tries to fire them- according to the article duffer linked to the employee wins 74% of the time.
The riots are going to work for now. But one of these days France is going to be screwed. The limits they put on employers and employees is going to catch up with them one of these days. It’ll be worse than 20% unemployment.
Slee
I just read “Naked Economics”. The author makes the point that the French in particular are WRONG about economics. The economic pie pieces grow when the overall pie grows, not when the pieces are protected, and the pie stays the same, or shrinks. It’s sad, really.
One thing I keep asking myself about both these French laws and the ones just passed in Australia:
How do you improve the economy by making it easier to fire people?
All you end up with is a bunch of people who go from job to job (because they have no security), doing whatever they can until the boss gets sick of them and fires them, so he can hire a 17 year old blonde girl with large breasts and a prediliction for short skirts, or the office manager’s boyfriend, or whatever.
Speaking from personal experience? Me? Never! 
Yep. Yep. What we really need are new affirmative action laws for brunettes with small tits who wear trousers.
And without unions, what makes you think there would be any labor laws at all ? You wouldn’t be beating your chest about how you are a “free agent”; you’d work as long as you were told, at whatever you were told, for whatever pay and conditions you were offered. Or you would starve when you were replaced by someone who would.
Why would they be infuriated? Most of the older folk have guaranteed jobs at a good income. No one cares about GDP growth or whatever, so long as they have a decent job or their prospects for keeping it or getting another one are fairly good - same as the US.
The only people who ought to be infuriated are mainly poor immigrants who have the highest rates of unemployment and basically no chance of getting a good job. And if they were to protest, then everyone will just blame it on the fact that they’re violent Muslims without looking at the underlying cause.
I can certainly understand why a young, employed, unionized French worker would be outraged and on the warpath if the government proposed taking away privileges and protections he/she already enjoys.
But as it is, young French citizens have an appallingly high unemployment rate. There are undoubtedly many reasons for this, including some I’m not aware of, but one small part of the reason is that employers don’t want to hire people they can’t get rid of if they turn out to be incompetent/lazy/whatever.
So, by taking to the streets and protesting against the proposed reforms, a young, unemployed French woman is really saying, “Given a choice between an imaginary job with 100% security and a real job that doesn’t have 100% security, I opt for the imaginary job.”
Short answer: Making it easier to fire people makes employers more likely to hire them.
Hardly. I can demand much more than some legal minimums in any case. It is quite difficult to replace people with my skillset. It’s getting the job in the first place which is the hard part: employers don’t like to take chances. But that’s always true, and given to cost to hire a worker now, I don’t blame them.
It’s a simple process, observed many times over. Let’s say you have booming sales. But, it’s extremely hard to fire workers. Because of that, you don’t want to hire more than you can afford in lean times. So you hire only those with proven track records if possible, and hire as few people as possible, even if it means overlooking opportunity.
It’s hard to be fired even for gross incompetence, and so employers avoid any risk at all. But of course, most economic opportunities are risky. And it’s horrible for small businesses.
This is pretty much true. The immigrant muslim riots a while back were rioting for better access to jobs and so on. And since the government is beholden to whomever rioted last…
It’s a mess, anyway.
Ultimately, things are going to come to a head. The French either need to accept economic reforms or tell the immigrants to leave. Neither will solve all problems, but would be at least a major part of a solution.
These people have children or grandchildren who have a limited future thanks to bad economic policy. That’s why they should care.
Let’s put it this way, if you have a business, and want to establish a presence in Europe, would you pick France as the place to start off? Would you willingly create a French office that is bigger than the absolute minimum necessary to have a French presence? Given a choice, I would pick a country that has more lax labor laws, so that I’m not stuck with numerous extra, unfireable, employees to suck my business down the toilet.
Instead of seeing France as a place with lots of untapped educated labor, a golden investment opportunity, it’s a place you want to avoid.
Or, you hire cheap workers, because you know that in just under two year’s time, when they are earning a little more, you can fire them without a reason and recruit more keen young graduates with no job security - ie. cheap and replaceable workforce. Now it might be that the nature of the job means the investment in training, etc. makes this not viable, but the benefits might exceed the risks.
In short, whilst having too much job security is not beneficial to the employer, and leads to employees taking advantage or crying foul when sacked for legitimate means, having no job security is not beneficial to the workforce. It leads to exploitation and manipulation. I fully sympathise with the students, although not necessarily their methods (although it’s a tried and tested way of acting out democracy in France).
On another note, some of the xenophobia coming out of posts in this thread is pretty disturbing. Is it ok to criticise/stereotype a whole race as long as they’re white and western?
What labor laws give me serious benefit right now?
I’m a mid-level “exempt” manager and consultant. This means not only am I not paid for overtime, but overtime work is mandatory. If I have to work on Sunday morning at 3:00am for no pay, I have to work at Sunday morning at 3:00am for no pay. My “remedy” as such is to find another job. I have no guarantee of vacation, no (known) Federal guarantee of benefits, and I can be fired at any time for any reason except for the ones I’m protected under Federal Law by (race, etc.)
In other words, I work as long as I’m told, for the pay and conditions and benefits I agreed to when I took the job. The pay and conditions are covered under contract law, not labor law. Workplace safety conditions are covered under OSHA, which is likely the only way in which labor laws protect me.
As an aside, I wonder how many people here have ever been to France, and worked in a French office or industrial environment. I have - I’ve worked in a French power plant for a few weeks, and in a French office for the same time. I’ve found the environment to be pretty much the same as the US. I didn’t see any 35-hour work weeks where I was, I saw 40-45 hour weeks. The people who were working the shorter time were janitors, office temps, and cafeteria staff and such. The engineers I worked with worked the same 60-hour weeks at the plant I did.
Not really. It’s not like France’s economy has been shrinking. And given current demographic trends as the older generation retires and there aren’t enough of the younger generation to fill their shoes, demand for labor will increase. And again, the people on the streets tend to be the educated, “elite” class of young people where the unemployment figure is lower. Chances are their children would be in that class, too, so the prospect of not finding a job isn’t actually all that pressing for them.
Of course not. I’m not against the reform. I actually think it would be a good thing for the French economy. I’m just stating why I think the people protesting the reform aren’t as “irrational” as people are making them out to be.
Come on. Do you think that accurately describes US companies? Those types of companies generally fail altogether-- unless, that is, the government takes even stupider steps to “protect” domestic manufacturing so that companies can’t fail.
Actually, you made my point for me in this very post of yours. Read your own material closely. Are you going to argue that those young people would have been better off without jobs? Better to have some jobs than no jobs. With French labor laws in place, they simply would never have been hired.
Moreover, there’s a bootstrapping effect here. The more workers with more jobs, the better the economy runs. This tends to cause companies to want to hire more people. Thus, labor protection laws as the French have are economic double-whammies. They cut employment in two major ways.