Why is everyone rioting in France?

Today, as I reached my school, the Alliance Francaise on Blvd Raspail, I saw a string of 15 police 'camions' (trucks/vans) lined up along the boulevard. On crossing the boulevard I was joined by about 20 gendarmes on foot, walking en mass to the building next to the Alliance.

Housed in that building is a graduate school of social sciences. Over the past week or so of student unrest, I've watched students blockading the doors of the school with desks and chairs, and putting banners up on the high iron fences. On the sign which reads "Evolution des etudiants . . . .", someone has cleverly taped a piece of paper with a large 'R' immediately in front of the "Evolution". It all seemed low key, and I hadn't seen any protests or violence.

Well, apparently, something changed last night. As I looked down into the courtyard from my classroom this morning, I could see that the students had used tape to spell out messages inside their classroom windows. There was a pile of charred something - furniture, books? in the middle of the courtyard, and graffitti on the courtyard ground and on some of the building's windows. My Professor, Lucie, said that there had been a standoff last night, and that the students finally left the school at about 4 or 5 a.m. this morning. She had heard that there was a lot of vandalism inside the school, with furniture and computers smashed. The police were obviously there to 'secure' and probably to investigate the scene.

What's this all about? Its about the promise of job security. Thanks to the strength of organized labor in France, employees once hired and once they've passed a short proving period, can expect to keep their jobs until they retire, and many French people do exactly that -- they stay in one company/occupation for life.

However, France is struggling with an extremely high rate of unemployment -- 10% nationwide, but a staggering 20% or so among youth. The politicians, in their wisdom, passed a law recently, the Contrat Premiere Embauche (loosely translated, first employment contract) (CPE), which, for the first time, gives employers permission to fire people under the age of 26 at will with no explanation.

Sound familiar? Job security is a long-forgotten idea in the states. The youth of France are not willing to lose their rights, as they see it, to job security. They don't want to see France become an employment at will state.

The French daily, Le Monde, has a special edition today about the CPE protests and how the government is responding (slowly and ineffectively, by all accounts). Click here to see/read more (in French, sorry).
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/
sequence/0,2-734511,1-0,0.html

Here is a gallery of photos of the civil unrest in Paris over the CPE:
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/portfolio/
0,12-0@2-734511,31-754133@51-725561,0.html

And here's a link to today's New York Times for their article about scheduled talks between France's unions and the government:
http://www.nytimes.com/
2006/03/23/international/europe/24france_
web.html?pagewanted=all

What do you think about the new French law?