« Dartmouth Men, Angry Women, Harvey, &c. | Home | It’s a Good Day for a Correction »

Monday, April 10, 2006

When the Going Gets Tough, the French Back Down

So proposed in Gaul was the First Employment Contract—known as the CPE, because in France things go in the wrong order—which would institute some standardized work contract for employees under the age of twenty-six, and would make their retention subject to such things as the discretion of management, performance, production, and other evaluative factors with which Americans are intimately familiar. The specter of accountability piqued many nerves there. The contract’s controversial provision would have allowed summary dismissal of those working under the CPE within their first two years of employment. After that? Les tropiques!

But, oh, those two years of required work could set asunder the all-important bronzing and gazing and smoking of French youth, and so aux armes went they, though not really to arms (those are illegal in France) but instead to the wending streets of Paris and elsewhere, where a few cars were torched, a few banners waved, many adorable brooding Gallic faces painted, and any number of trees senselessly murdered in the production of witty placards, with such inapt rallying cries as, “Down with Dictatorship.”

Yes, indeed. Down with dictatorship, and up with private sector autonomy, right mes amis?

The Chirac government has now caved, saying it’ll withdraw its support for the proposed liberalizing legislation and will instead find “other measures to tackle youth unemployment.” The sight of so many protesting young people obviously put a credible scare into the slick-haired politicos in charge, largely, I suspect, because the “protesting young” are just two vocabulary tweaks away from the “disaffected youth” whose violent fury brought the nation to its knees at the beginning of this year.

Posted on April 10, 2006 08:52 AM. Permalink