French labour laws trigger immense protests

[Az]

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

Emminent domain projects for neighborhood revitalization =forced migration and re-education.

[JohnT]

Here's a chart of French unemployment since 1970. As you note, the two paths diverge rather dramatically in the 1970's. What happened in 1973/74? What law changed?

http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/strat/publ/etp23.htm

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Az

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

Emminent domain projects for neighborhood revitalization =forced migration and re-education.

I know Spiffor didn't mean that, it was just the way he worded it. Euphemisms strike me as funny.

Of course, I don't know how equivalent "redistribute the population" is to "neighborhood revitalization", either. Is that what they're calling it nowadays?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by JohnT
Er... forced migration and re-education camps? Are y'all serious?

The ghettoes are almost only entirely made of public housing built in the 60's, that followed an urbanistic idea of semi-autarchy, and where the bureacracy increasingly located poor people from similar ethnic background. I advocate creating public housing all across the agglomerations, and progressively destroy these old monsters (don't worry, nearly all inhabitants would be delighted to go to a nice neighbourhood in a new housing).

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.

I don't know. Tell me about that colleague of mine, who works at two jobs without any prospect of promotion, just to make ends meet. How do the job opportunities he has (he works in flexible jobs) help him create his future?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Pekka
Spiffor, yes, but who would replace him? Another accident?

- Sarkozy is an entirely different kind of garbage. I'd say he's more akin to Nixon.
- Villepin is much more subtle in his arrogance, and he is much less likely to vex foreigners without doing it purposefully.
- Jospin (now out) is the average dull technican, à la Prodi.
- The various socialist candidates (one might still have a chance to win, if his party finally got its **** together) are also fairly dull. One of them is arrogant, but in a technician way (i.e. "I'm better than you because my studies and experience pwn yours")

[Colon™]

Riots in France!

PRAISE ALLAH

[Shi Huangdi]

We have tried for the past 30 years. Our labour alws have become increasingly lax, and yet unemployment stagnated or increased.

Over the same period France has also face increased competition from trade. You have had the European Union exapnd it's size, and increase the amount that it synchronizes the different economies of the EU. You have also seen increasing globization provide more competition.

Consider how tightly regulated your job market is now, it shouldn't be a suprise to anyone what happens to your unemployment as competition increases.

Legislation like this should make it so it is not as much of a risk for companies to hire young workers, so that if it doesn't work out they won't be stuck with the worker, or be faced with a ton of paperwork or the possibility of appeals against the action.

[Pekka]

Yes but Villepin looks arrogant

Jospin? I don't know this man. Maybe he could be up for it?

[Kassiopeia]

Jospin lost to Le Pen in the first round of the 2002 presidential election.

[Pekka]

If he lost to Le Pen, then he doesn't have any potential to be a real leader.

Me thinks we should give Le Pen a try. Just to see what happens. My news year has been boring.

[Kassiopeia]

Btw, when you say "technician" Spiff, you probably mean like "a civil servant"? If they're all finely bred ENArques, though, I'm not surprised they're like that.

[Ted Striker]

France

Protecting the people

[Lawrence of Arabia]

dont think that the students are in unision - there have been clashes between students in some universities who want classes to resume. these are the students who are not issued from the rich, middle class bourgeois families who can afford to strike and take extra time in university. they are the ones who need to finish their studies fast so they can get a job.

france is a sick country. first youve got the poor immigrants rioting, now you have the rich middle class students, hijacking the universities from those who need to get their studies done. when you have 20%+ unemployment for the poor, you need to change something.
these students think its the return of may 68. if you wanna strike, or whatever, go ahead, but dont occupy the universities.

what nobody has said here (i think) is what the contrat première embauche actually does:

an employer can fire any employee under the age of 26 and with less than 2 years of work at will. that employee will then get 2000 euros a month (or something like that ) for the next three months, after which he can then get unemployment benefits.

i hope the government breaks the rich students. you guys better get your heads outta your butts, or else in 20 years, china will have passed you.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

"we will get only what we know how to take"


shoulda been written

"we're gonna continue to take it up the ass, have 10%+ unemployment because thats what we like, and in the end get passed by every other nation in the world with the exception of somalia"

meanwhile the big winner in all of this is Ségolène Royal.

[JohnT]

I found an article on the net that argues that France's employment problems come from their excessive taxation of labor, compared to Britain and the US:

American Journal of Sociology

Neoliberalism in France, pp 25-26, 29.

"Tax Policy

The 1981 tax cut in the United States was rooted in the anti-property tax social movement in California, which brought the general issue of taxation to public attention, and catalyzed by Reagan’s wish to ward off the political rivalry of Jack Kemp, who had been making political capital out of the issue of income tax cuts (Aldrich and Niemi 1996; Himmelstein 1990; Rudder 1983; Strahan 1990; Weaver 1988; Prasad, in press). Such a movement was unlikely in France because French tax policies taxed income, capital, and property much less than did American taxpolicies (figs. 7, 8, 9, 10). As many scholars have pointed out, France, like the other large welfare states of Europe, has a regressive tax structure (taking proportionately more taxes from the lower portions of the income distribution; see Steinmo 1993; Kato 2003; Lindert 2004) based on payroll and sales taxes. While property taxes hit those with property, and income taxes are structured so that those with higher incomes pay higher percentages, sales taxes are regressive because the same absolute amount is paid on an item regardless of income or wealth (which means lower income workers pay a higher percentage of their income on the tax), and payroll taxes are regressive because

first, only wages are taxed, whereas earnings from capital or real estate, which accrue overwhelmingly to the wealthy, escape imposition. Second, social security contributions are deductible, and since tax rates are progressive, the size of the deduction increases with income. For example, those in the top income bracket, with a marginal tax rate of 56 percent, pay only 44 percent of their social security charges. Third, many social security programs do not tax earnings above a certain ceiling ($2,300 per month in 1997). Not surprisingly, in the early 1990s, it was estimated that a minimum wage worker contributed 13.6 percent of his or her salary to the social security system, whereas a manager earning $60,000 per year paid only 7.5 percent.
(Levy 1999b, p. 250)

Throughout the course of the Fifth Republic, France has had a regressive tax structure. Since de Gaulle, the tax regime has attempted continuously to lower taxes on corporations. When international competition—
inaugurated by the Treaty of Rome, the globalization of exchange, and the end of empire—hit France, de Gaulle’s response was to attempt to create a hospitable environment for industry: “All taxes, without exception—taxes on business volume [“chiffre d’affaires”], indirect taxes, registration taxes, direct taxes—were concerned to reduce the fiscal burden weighing on enterprise, or indeed to suppress it altogether” (Nizet 1991, p. 267; see also Bertoni 1995). Table 3 shows that while the American tax structure taxes capital, the French tax structure taxes labor and consumption."

http://www.wcas.northwestern.edu/sociology/faculty/prasad/docprasad-france.pdf

Table 3: