French labour laws trigger immense protests

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Oerdin
I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out how this will "create another obstical to employment" for young people. The inability to hire or fire protects current employees at the expense of future employees so reducing or eliminating such laws will of course benifet those without jobs who are seeking to enter the labor force. France will still be more expensive then every where else to hire people but at least more of those employees can be let go when they are no longer economically justified. That does indeed remove a lot of risk from the decision to hire people or not.

You're not the only one scratching your head. Upon reading your post, I'm wondering where to begin...

[Two minutes pass. For real]

1. The ability to hire people does exist. The ability to fire people does also exist: only that you have to justify why you fire a person.
Among the accepted justifications for firing, there are economic reasons (drop in activity) or grave failure of the employee's.
Also, there are plenty of contract-types that allow to hire workers for a specific period of time, so that it matches a temporary increase in activity. I have a personal experience of this: the past two weeks, I have been working at a soon-to-be-opened store, where I got daily contracts and daily paysheets.

For the past 6 monthes, small businesses have enjoyed the kind of legislation currently debated with the CPE (i.e. they can fire without justification during the first two years of the contract - this small-business contract is called CNE). According to studies, this measure resulted in only a few jobs that wouldn't have been created otherwise. A large majority of the CNEs that were signed would have been stable jobs with guarantees instead, had that law not existed.

2 "France will still be more expensive then every where else to hire people"
Bull****.

3. BENEFIT

[Kassiopeia]

(Offtopic)

I don't think the so called anti-liberal vote was quite two thirds of the Non in the referendum, I recall when reading those surveys that the causes for voting were very dispersed between various reasons. I'll look the numbers up when I get to Jyväskylä later today.

(/offtopic)

[Dinner]

OK, then I suggest you stick with the system which created 20% unemployment for young people and never admit there is a problem. That is the best way to solve the problem.

France's basic problem is 1) it costs to much compared to what it costs in other nations 2) it is to difficult to fire someone so no one wants to hire anyone. Refuse to solve those problems and France's economy will continue to under perform.

[Pekka]

France's problem is that it's filled with French people. They love bureocracy and don't see it as part of the problem. Furthermore they love to never admit anything. THis problem is ultimately French created, never solved by French, and consequences are felt in other EU countries at some point.

Thanks France. What a gift to the world you have been in the last 50 years.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Pekka
France's problem is that it's filled with French people.

[Dinner]

I think Pekka is still angry about the French President calling Finnish food fried raindeer crap.

[JohnT]

I think if you're caught marching in protest, you should be fired.

[Pekka]

No I'm not. I didn't even remember that until now. And I said in the thread when that was news that I agree with him, but I think he is an idiot anyway.

Chirac IS an idiot. Arrogant fool who represent the TRUE FRENCH well. Only in France can you have such an idiot in his position for so long, with the small exception of Italy and Berlusconi. But they live in self denial. Not all of them of course, about what Berlusconi is about. But... Italy is still cool and Italian people are cool.

French aren't. They THINK they are cool. But they aren't. They are the real Old Europe, and I don' tmean the definition by the IDIOT Rummie, I mean when you think about uncomfortable but posh, cold but expensive, Uuuuh this is quite fancy - mm I don't think so(?), yes but you are stupid foreigner... And let's not forget they love their frogs.

I'm open to all cultures, beliefs and stuff. I think it's part of being civilized to be able to understand and accept everyone else and their ways. Learn to enjoy it. Enrich your own life with their help. There's no absolute value of who is better in this sense, even though you think you are more advanced.

But this does not apply to the frogs. Because they are so arrogant children, that it would be like saying it's racism to not like racists. Meaning, that to say French culture is s*it, is not actually about hating a culture, or thinking yours is better, or saying that it has lower value.... it's the TRUTH.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Oerdin
OK, then I suggest you stick with the system which created 20% unemployment for young people and never admit there is a problem. That is the best way to solve the problem.

I haven't seen any actual element that corroborates the idea that unemployment would be significantly lowered with more flexibility.

For the past 30 years, France had a slew of labour laws that increase flexibility. Yet, in the same period, unemployment exploded. I'm not saying the two are corelated (IMO they're not), but it certainly doesn't speak in favour of flexibilization. OTOH, the most important eras of growth and job-growth we had were under left-wing governments, where labour laws were made slightly more stringent (such as the 35-hour workweek). Again, I don't think these events are corelated, but it sheds once again a negative light on the people who scream bloody murder whenever there is a law about labour relations.

IMO, youth unemployment comes from several reasons:
1. Among the young, only the active are counted as unemployed. Not the students. As a result, in these stats, the disenfranchised are over-represented. That's why I think we should be trying to do something against the problems of the disenfranchised, rather than against the problems of the young (we discussed it in the riot threads, basically it is to destroy the ghettoes and distribute the poor populations more evenly on the territory, to offer better education opportunities to the poor etc.).

2. The young already pass through a 10-year gateway of job unstability. The CPE would only worsen it, because at least the current contracts offer some guarantees about how long they'll last.
The question is not whether the young should remain in the same job for their entire life (nobody advocates it anymore), but about how to make this period of job-unstability into something productive, and about how to prevent this period of job-unstability to mean life-unstability.

3. France's biggest corporations are making obcene profits (+50% this year), which aren't tapped to be used where they can be useful. On the other hand, we have plenty of shortages in manpower for things such as hospitals, schools etc. Tapping the money where it is could significantly help creating employment and reducing our shortages in services.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by JohnT
I think if you're caught marching in protest, you should be fired.

WTG democracy

[JohnT]

I haven't seen any actual element that corroborates the idea that unemployment would be significantly lowered with more flexibility.

Well, how about the flexibility to try? Because the current laws sure aren't working.

Are the 20% that are unemployed subsidized by the state?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Pekka
Chirac IS an idiot. Arrogant fool who represent the TRUE FRENCH well. Only in France can you have such an idiot in his position for so long

An unfortunate accident

[JohnT]

(we discussed it in the riot threads, basically it is to destroy the ghettoes and distribute the poor populations more evenly on the territory, to offer better education opportunities to the poor etc.).

Er... forced migration and re-education camps? Are y'all serious?

Why don't y'all try offering better job opportunities to the poor? To do that, you have to offer better hiring opportunities to the employers. It's a simple fact, really.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by JohnT
Well, how about the flexibility to try? Because the current laws sure aren't working.

We have tried for the past 30 years. Our labour alws have become increasingly lax, and yet unemployment stagnated or increased.
I'm all for trying too. But trying somehting different. Something that has a chance to work.

Are the 20% that are unemployed subsidized by the state?

Only a few of them. In order to become subsidized, you must have worked for some time, which is definitely not always the case. There is another possibility, the survival income (a subsidy, called Minimal Insertion Income), but this one is granted only to 26+ people, i.e. those that aren't considered as "young" in the stats.

[Pekka]

Spiffor, yes, but who would replace him? Another accident?

JohnT, I'm sure you're even more aware than I am that re-education camps and forced things are socialist dreams. 'You have to be like I am, think like I do and best of all, I know what's best for you' is socialist motto.