The Black Informant

After battling over an hour with an unusual slow connection, I was finally able to find a good article that explains the ongoing protests in France:

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At issue: a new law pushed through in the wee hours of Feb. 9 by the government of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin that aims to reduce youth unemployment by making it easier for companies to lay off workers under the age of 26 during their first two years on the job.

While that sounds counter-intuitive, French business leaders have long complained that the country’s strict worker protections discourage them from hiring more. Villepin, seeking to reduce the nation’s double-digit youth unemployment, proposed an approach that he thought would lower the risk of taking on young workers.

DANGEROUS TERRITORY.  The results have been explosive. Labor protection is the “third rail” of French politics, and previous attempts at reform have even brought down governments. To address the crisis, Villepin held talks in his Matignon office on Mar. 20 with business leaders and student representatives. The two dozen CEOs and other executives who met the prime minister discussed possible amendments that could defuse opposition and prevent the law from being withdrawn entirely.

Why are business people so bent on the change? “The fundamental issue is France’s capacity to create employment,” says Amaury Eloy, the founder of a local copy center chain and member of the pro-entrepreneurialism group Growth Plus. “Hiring has become a bureaucratic decision, instead of one based on need or opportunity,” he says.

Consider the case of mobile phone retail chain The Phone House, a unit of British giant Carphone Warehouse. The company’s CEO, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, was one of the leaders who met with Villepin on Mar. 20. He already employs 2,500 people, nearly half of whom are under 26. “Put simply, we will hire more people if this contract survives the protests,” Roux de Bézieux says. (Great article! Click here for the rest)

Opinions from around the world (about.com)

“We are conservative, and not revolutionary, for refusing the reforms that are necessary for our society. We are egotistical, not generous, for blocking the entrances to universities for those who want to, and often have to, work. We do not want to change reality by protesting; rather, we refuse to see it for what it is…We are not idealistic youth. We are spoiled children.”

“I am 25 years old and I am not afraid of the working world” from Le Figaro, a prominent right of center French newspaper (France, in French)

“Responding to the initial absence of dialogue by obstinately refusing all negociation, the trade unions, propped up by their logic of all or nothing, run the risk of driving the country toward a showdown, and no one will be able to predict the outcome.”

“All Or Nothing Union” Le Figaro (France, in French)

“More and more, the choice is between a society composed of independent and responsible individuals, confronting risks for which they may have to pay the price, and a society of wholesale redistribution where individual behavior is standardized from the cradle to the grave, as one already sees in the Scandinavian model.”

“The Complex of the Right and the CPE” Le Figaro (France, in French)

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