Who’s Revolting in France?

(Second in a series)

What is remarkable about the events in France is the solidarity of the population in opposition to the changes in labor law pushed through parliament by the government. Indeed, the law has provoked a genuine class based upsurge that is drawing in many different parts of the working and middle classes. We will discuss some of the reasons for this in our next blog. But in this blog we take a look at the composition of the opposition—and the proponents of the law.

Poll figures indicate that 66% of all French people oppose the new law.

The mass protests began in the universities, where the law was quickly dubbed the “Kleenex law”, because it made young workers as disposable as tissue. Over the course of the past week more than half of all French universities were shut down, and last Thursday a quarter of a million students participated in demonstrations.

Much has been made of the comparison with 1968 but the differences are profound. In 1968, France and the industrial world generally were still in what the French call the “Glorious Thirty”—the growth decades that followed WWII. With an expanding economy and a large cohort of young people, the prospects and possibilities were quite different than they are today. But what is similar to 1968 is the surprising ability of students to initiate and organize massive protests that draw in many sectors of society and shake the French establishment.

Workers and their unions have joined the protests because they fear the chipping away of labor rights and standards won over a century of struggle. The labor new law would insure the institutionalization of a two-tier workforce by allowing different rights for different workers, and in the end would weaken protections for everyone.

When the unions turned out en masse to join students for last Saturday’s demonstrations, it marked the revival of a powerful alliance that shook France in 1968 and 1994. Now unions and the students are building toward a “day of action” on March 28 which will feature strikes and other protests and take alliance up a notch.

But it is not just students and traditional workers that are opposing the new law, so are the immigrants that the government argued—some would say cynically—would most benefit from the new law. Here is what the Financial Times reports about the immigrant opposition to the new law:

Hostility to the contract from the poor suburbs is a blow to Mr. de Villepin. He had seemed to be telling the student protesters in central Paris not to worry. As graduates of prestigious universities, such as the Sorbonne, they are not the intended recipients of the new contract. Instead, it is meant for the poorly educated immigrant children in les banlieues, who set fire to thousands of cars and buildings across France last year.

But this argument is being undermined by an increasing number in the suburbs repeating the criticisms of the student demonstrators. The important difference is that the poor of the outer-city ghettos have the added worry of racial discrimination.

Edilson Monteiro, an 18-year-old school drop-out from Montfermeil, says: "Before the 'first job contract' there were enough difficulties for people from the banlieues, with the difference in our clothes, our language and our culture, but now they are making things even more insecure.

Young people are very worried about entering the world of work. Now if I make a mistake or upset the boss, he can just get rid of me without any reason," says Edilson, whose mother brought him to the local job centre after he quit as a construction sales agent.

Why, given the overwhelming rejection of the new labor law by the French people is the government still pushing for its implementation? It no mystery: in France and throughout Europe, the big money is out to undermine the European social model of decent benefits and strong labor laws. They have seized on youth unemployment as a way to divide the great majority of people who want to retain the principle of economic security.  On Monday, these erstwhile defenders of the poor met with Villepin and most told him to stand tight. According to the International Herald Tribune:

.... Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin summoned 24 of France's most powerful executives to his office to seek ways of salvaging the new law…

Charles Beigbeder, chief executive of the French power company Poweo, said after attending the meeting that failure to win approval for the legislation could stall efforts to reform the labor market until after the presidential election next spring.

Another executive who attended the meeting and declined to be identified was less optimistic.

"There was a feeling among many of the participants that if the law is withdrawn you can kiss goodbye to reform for the next 10 years," he said, according to his spokesman. "It would send a terrible signal."

But he said that others present had argued that the legislation was "a political disaster" and that Villepin should withdraw it.

The businessmen's comments come against a backdrop of escalating social unrest over the First Employment Contract, an initiative known by its French initials as the CPE and closely associated with the prime minister, who drafted the new law in an effort to ease double-digit youth unemployment…….

Participants said Villepin still had no intention of suspending the legislation despite pressure from the streets, where hundreds of thousands have demonstrated in recent days and more protests are planned this week. A wide strike was scheduled Monday for March 28, student and union leaders said.

Villepin is "not in a spirit of moving back," Bruno van Ryb, the head of Middlenext, was quoted as saying by Reuters.

"The prime minister seems determined with a state of mind that is relatively easy to understand: You launch the CPE and after several months it is relatively easy to analyze whether it is a success or not," he said.

Claude Bébéar, chairman of the insurance giant Axa and one of France's leading entrepreneurs, said: "We're just in one of those psychodramas that the French love but that is not justified."……

The chairwoman of Medef, [the French Employers Association] Laurence Parisot, threw her support behind Villepin last week.

"We hope that finally we will have a debate on reforming the labor market," she said, "which functions badly and is getting worse."

There is a deep uneasiness in France and Europe about the direction of society and the economy so one never knows what could come next.

M.O.

(Next: What’s at stake in France and what can the rest of the world learn from the protests.)

      

Comments

[Jérôme à Paris]

Your post was quoted over at our blog, European Tribune (www.eurotrib.com). I've been writing about the French protests and even more about how the (slanted) coverage of the protests in the English language press. You might be interested in the following posts:

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/3/22/192640/380 - Triple Play (on US coverage)

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/3/22/41153/2819 - Now they tell us (about the underlying economic situation of France)

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/3/19/182657/265 - It's the same fight

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/3/18/102531/258 - Toulouse anti-CPE POWAAA (on the ground reporting)

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/3/19/74228/7814 - Article deconstruction: French farce

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/3/17/4178/19467 - Article Deconstruction - Student protests per IHT