The First Employment Contract (CPE is its French abbreviation),
signed into law April 2 by President Jacques Chirac, eases
restrictions on employers. It allows them to fire workers under the
age of 26 without getting entangled in the massive French
bureaucracy.
The plan would encourage employers to hire more young
workers, because bosses wont be fearful of penalties and costs that
come with firing workers. It comes at an important time Frances
unemployment rate for young workers is about 22 percent.
Yet, the media have focused on business firing not
hiring. In Paris today and all across France, tens of thousands of
students took to the streets, demanding a fair chance at a job and
protesting a new law that could make it easier to fire younger
workers, said NBCs Campbell Brown on the March 23 Nightly News.
But thats not the end of the story. Frances
socialistic welfare system is showing more of its flaws. Its safety
nets are supported by income taxes of up to 48 percent and corporate
taxes of up to 34 percent. Young people, mostly Muslims, rioted last
fall saying they were shut out of the job market, which prompted the
creation of the
new law that now has youth in an uproar again.
As the Cato Institutes
Michael Tanner wrote during the November 2005 riots, taxes
consume nearly 44 percent of Frances GDP. And Frances Social
Security system? Underfunded and in debt, possibly to the tune of
200 percent of the countrys GDP. French unemployment overall is
twice that of the United States, while its economic growth is less
than half of U.S. growth.
American journalists have long been enamored of the
French system, as the
Business & Media Institute has shown. Although their 35-hour work week
was partly
rolled back last year, as ABCs David Wright said on the March
28 World News Tonight, French workers are used to the good life.
Wright explained: They get five weeks vacation a year. And its
extremely hard to fire them. One in four young people here are
unemployed, in part because French companies dont want to promise
them a job for life. Wright said that Business owners like the new
law but a majority of the population here likes it the old way.
Many of those who like it the old way have been
showing up on American broadcasts. CNNs Jim Bittermann highlighted
student protesters on the March 30 Your World Today. The young
revolutionaries who have been leading the charge against authority
insist theyre not just trying to cling to past privileges; they
want something done to help one young person in four who cant find
a job, Bittermann said.
Of course, as Tanner pointed out, the generosity of
French welfare offers little incentive for the unemployed to look
for work. The result is a growing population of idle, disillusioned
poor with little connection to society at large.
But when Bittermann asked student protester Jean-Baptiste
Prevost, You dont see a link between the social protections and
the unemployment rate? the student replied, Not at all. Not at
all.
NBCs Keith Miller said on the March 28 Nightly News
that the idea has ignited widespread anger from the very people it
was supposed to help the young. The only person Miller included
in his report was a disgruntled French student who accused the
French government of sacrificing its youth. CBSs Sheila MacVicar
echoed one of the popular phrases circulating among news reports on
the April 2 Sunday Morning: The demonstrators say this would make
them the Kleenex generation: use and throw away.
There was an irony in the student protests that few
journalists captured, however.
USA Todays Jeffrey Stinson on April 4 actually interviewed a
Sorbonne University student who wasnt protesting. In fact,
19-year-old Guillaume de Jesse told him he saw a big contradiction
in middle-class and upper middle-class university students
protesting a law designed to help less-educated, less-advantaged
workers. Because the law allows workers a trial period to see if
employer and employee are happy with the arrangement, de Jesse said
it could help unskilled youths break into the job market.
MacVicar was one of few broadcast journalists who
explained the French situation a bit more, saying that the French
social system, source of so much pride, which provides support and
care from the baby buggy to retirement and in between education,
health care, parental care, worker protection, short working weeks
and long vacations no longer works.
But networks werent rushing to point out that the law
wasnt as revolutionary as French students indicated. As USA Todays
Stinson reported: the CPE would seem to have little effect on young
French workers. Young workers often go from job to job on short-term
contracts of six months to two years until they find a long-term,
indefinite contract with an employer that provides more security and
more lucrative benefits.
Related Links:William F. Buckely Jr.: French Despair Cal Thomas: The French job funk Getting the Sack Really Would Help French Workers by the Hudson Institutes Diana Furchtgott-Roth Michael Tanner: Welfare Lessons from France USA Today: French protests reflect fear of U.S.-style job insecurity Business & Media Institute: Couric, CBS Touted 35-hour Work Week, but Will They Admit It Failed?
