6-26-06, 11:30 am
To use a US baseball methaphor, the French right-wing government has three strikes against it. First, the “no” vote rejecting the European Constitution in May 2005; second, the uprising in the working-class public housing projects from October to November 2005, and now a third moment: the mobilization against youth job insecurity. The first hiring contract or “cpe” (contrat première embauche or) constitutes one of the “reforms” of the labor market recently adopted by the right-wing, neoliberal government in Paris.
These proposals were at the center of a debate about fighting unemployment. As a matter of fact, for more than 20 years, the unemployment rate in France has been around 10 percent. Today, around 7.5 million persons are affected by lack of employment or underemployment: 3 million of all categories including 1 million not registered, 1.5 million with temporary or “interim” contracts, and 2 million with part-time jobs. The unemployment rate was 22.8 percent in 2005 for 15-24 year olds (618,000 persons), and over 50 percent among those of African origin in the poorest districts of the suburbs.
The aim of these proposals is imposing contracts of unlimited, permanent duration (“CDI,” or contrats à durée indéterminée) with precarious jobs in large-scale firms of more than 20 persons. Enterprises resorting to this type of contract are allowed to forego employers’ social security contributions.
Its next of kin, the “CNE” (contrat nouvelle embauche or new hiring contract), concerns all workers in small and medium-sized firms of less than 20 persons, regardless of age. Since last August, more than 300,000 cne contracts have been signed. Granted to owners under the excuse of cutting labor costs, these gifts have proved their inefficiency in creating stable jobs. They resulted only in expanding public deficits and in reducing demand, thus in exerting new unemployment pressures – since unemployment, contrary to neoliberal ideology, is not due to excessively high labor costs, but to the submission of enterprises to demands for higher profits imposed by shareholders.
The more recent “first-hiring contract” would have made it possible for owners, during the first two years of employment, to lay off young people without procedure, justification or even legal recourse. This contract of insecurity is in fact worse than one of limited, temporary duration (“CDD,” or contrat à durée déterminée). The young worker, under it, is trapped day after day in an arbitrary state of uncertainty, prohibiting a stable and worthwhile existence, forming a family, being secure from want, seeking decent housing, and acquiring consumer goods.
One understands the main objective of the CPE: to exacerbate competition between workers, to make employment for youth insecure while using them to dismantle the structure of permanent wage-earner job statutes. Mainly, it was an attack against one of the accomplishments of existing labor laws in France: protections against arbitrary dismissal. Thanks to the struggles of workers, this protection against arbitrary dismissal – based on the requirement that employers must provide reason for any dismissal and the right of employees to file a claim in the event of abuse – imposed limits on the absolute power of the capitalists. The proposed new law fell under the general process of making the French labor market more “flexible,” as recommended by advocates of neoliberalism (suppression of the minimum wage, creation of a single flexible work contract, etc.), who have been long dreaming of putting an end to the “French exception.”
How did the young people of France, joined by workers united in a trade-union front, react? They mobilized themselves, organized general assemblies, took the floor when the dominant classes attempted to gag them, and informed themselves about the current reforms, as they did during the campaign against the European Constitution. They then closed down universities and colleges, blocked roads, stations and airports and took to the streets to massively demonstrate their resistance to this social war. Over 500,000 marched on February 7, one million on March 7, one and one-half million on March 18, between two and three million on March 28, and more than three million on April 4. In a number of provincial towns, it was often the very first massive demonstration.
Contrary to all appearances, the team of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy functions rather “well.” The first one undertook to destroy the labor laws, while the second one aimed at breaking the resistance by intimidating the youth. After the repression of the rioters in November, thousands of anti-CPE demonstrators (perhaps 4,350) were arrested. Sentences were passed by the hundreds (probably more than 630, including around 270 in first court appearances), against young people for having taken part in confrontations with the police in the streets. At the end of April, 71 prison sentences of up to eight months were decreed, as well as 167 trial decisions of imprisonment with remission of sentence. Is the government offering French youth a choice between job insecurity or prison?
Let’s imagine the buildings of the University of La Sorbonne in the Latin district of Paris surrounded for weeks by two lines of police-vans, La Sorbonne square itself surrounded by anti riot steel-plate movable barriers, through which one could distinguish a multitude of police vehicles and a significant number of CRS agents in battle dress – the “CRS” (Compagnie républicaine de sécurité, or Republican Security Company) are parts of the official forces responsible for order. This deployment of force, however, did not make the students lose their sense of humor. On the anti-riot barriers around La Sorbonne, one could read “do not feed the CRS, please,” an inscription that one can read usually in the zoo, but for the animals. Another banner read “because of the risks of contagion due to avian flu, containment of chickens” (in French slang, a “chicken” is a policeman).
After almost three months of crisis, two general strikes and a series of demonstrations gathering nearly 10 million, President Jacques Chirac and Premier Dominique de Villepin announced, Monday April 10, one day before a massive demonstration, the “replacement” of the law creating the CPE with a plan for youth employment.
The plan called for public funds of 150 million in 2006, to be compared to the 23 billion granted to employers in the previous scheme (CPE). De Villepin declared: “The necessary conditions of confidence and serenity are not met, neither on the side of the young people, nor on the side of the enterprises, to allow the application of the CPE.” And he added: “I wanted to propose a strong solution. This was not understood by all, I regret it.”
The anti-CPE organizations applauded this decision, but were waiting in order to know the content of the newly proposed laws. The students’ leading trade union (UNEF) called for a new day of action on April 11, while recognizing that the suppression of the CPE constituted a first decisive victory. The CGT (General Confederation of Labor, the leading union of the French workers, close to the Communists) declared the withdrawal of the CPE as a “success of the convergent action of the workers, students and high-school pupils as well as of trade-union unity.” On April 13, 16 universities were seriously disrupted by the strikers; three others blocked, in Toulouse, Montpellier, and Aix-Marseille; and also Rennes, a spearhead of the anti-CPE mobilization, was closed again. On April 18, after expelling those occupying La Sorbonne, students voted for a “reorganization and remobilization of the movement” until the complete withdrawal of the CNE along with the law “on the equality of opportunities” (including provisions promoting apprenticeship contracts for 14-year-olds and restoring night work for those aged 15). They also demanded the satisfaction of salary claims, the lifting of anti-immigrant laws, and the ending of repression. But on April 19, the return to work was voted for everywhere. After the demonstration of May 1st, what is the next step of the French revolt? And in the other countries of Europe?
--Rémy Herrera is a researcher at the CNRS and teaches economics at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He is the coordinator of World Forum of Alternatives. The World Forum of Alternatives, whose president is Samir Amin and whose executive secretary is François Houtart, is an international network, which wrote, in January 2006, the Bamako Appeal.