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?
posted by Gillian & Mike @ 6:51 PM
5 Comments:
This is a comment from Diane . . .
i wish that many people here in the USA were protesting our presence in the war in Iraq (and various other global philanderings by the US gov't).
but, to the issue at hand: why are they making the law apply to those only under the age of 26 yo? without knowing much, that age cut-off puzzles me.
when i lived in France, it struck me as so incredible that French youth would take an exam at age 13 or 14yo which would then determine what they would do for the rest of their lives. now, this sort of fits with French culture and also the economics of the situation. but, it always made me contrast the USA ("I can do anything") and other cultures (following one path without much choice).
it seems to me to be so extreme-- one minute, everyone is plodding along their chosen path. the next minute, French students are wrecking havoc all over the nation. such wide extremes.
so, what do i think of the law? i think i need to know more. sad to say, despite the fact that i am commuting 80 miles/day and listen to NPR, i've heard very little about why these students are revolting, at least until i read Gillian's and Mike's blog, of course.
btw, i've been remiss in commenting on the rest of this site: AMAZING and FUN. like someone else said, it's like taking a little vacation whenever i log on.
diane (cummings)
albuquerque, new mexico
I was listening to the CBC last evening, the average unemployment rate among people under 25 in France is 25%. That's the average - in some areas it's much higher. So obviously something has to be done. But it seems to me unjust that the new law targets people under 26. That's what would be considered age discrimination in North America.
The French government would have been smarter to make the law non-age specific - something like creating a 6-month or 12-month probation period for all new hires regardless of age during which it's easier for employers to fire/lay-off people. While this would in fact have the effect of targeting younger workers (older ones being more likely to have been with the company longer), the age discrimination would not be as blatant.
Re: Diane's comment about 13- & 14-year-old kids taking an exam that determines the rest of their lives, I remember a comment made by one of my advisors when I was dropping out of grad school at 25. He was from Japan and he commented that in Japan, I simply wouldn't have had the option of making a sudden change in my career path that way. Probably a good thing that I wasn't in Japan, because if I'd tried to keep going with the grad school thing, I would have broken down psychologically - which in effect would have forced society to allow me to leave.
That's the upside of having a more flexible society. The downside is that I'm now 48 and have pretty much no job security. My retirement plans depend heavily on:
1) Surviving until the age of 66 1/2; and
2) The US Social Security system not going broke.
(I'll also get a bit of help from the gov't of Canada, but not much b/c I was already 40 when I immigrated.)
In the end, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other!
Sarah (Diane's sister)
Saint John, New Brunswick
8:30 AM Atlantic, 26-Mar-06
It struck me immediately as institutionalized age discrimination too when I first heard about it. But I wonder if that's a particularly American/North American mindset as we look at this issue. I wonder if its simply a matter of power. I suspect that if the French politicians had introduced a more global law as Sarah suggests, the whole bloody country would have ground to a halt (a never-ending general strike), and the politicians would have been literally or figuratively decapitated. Unions are extremely powerful here. I daresay the politicians wouldn't even entertain a more broad-reaching law. Perhaps they thought the youth would take it lying down?
This is a comment from Craig.
I was wondering if there was any talk in France about the connection between this rioting--i.e. in central Paris, and, by the looks of it, mostly young white people--and the rioting that occurred in the suburbs by young brown people. One of the complaints I recall in the suburban rioting was that it does not matter how hard or how smart you work: instead, if you are not "white" and "French," you don't get interviewed for a job in the first place. You don't even make it through the door that promises you perpetual employment. The corollary: it doesn't make any difference how hard or how well I (white French person who got the interview and landed the gig) work, I am guaranteed a job for life: and I don't want to be fired, even if a young brown person is the one who replaces me. Perhaps the new law, allowing for firing, is actually of benefit to immigrants? This may be an instance where general leftist/socialist politics is at odds with itself, thanks to globalization: labor protection versus "multiculturalism." Of course this happens in the US too: why shouldn't we send jobs to India, if they can do them for a third of what we do, and is of benefit to Indians? On the other hand: why should Indians get paid a third of what Americans do?
Hi folks, no comment on the protests etc., but just wishing Gillian a Happy Birthday!
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