Home > French Union Threatens Strike Over Labor Law
Un/Employment Trade unions Movement France
By JAMES KANTER
PARIS - Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin of France faced an ultimatum from union leaders today to withdraw the employment law that set off huge nationwide demonstrations and sporadic violence over the weekend or face a general strike.
After the protests ended in outbreaks of violence late Saturday, union leaders gave Mr. Villepin a deadline of Monday evening to withdraw the First Employment Contract, which was intended to make it easier for businesses to hire and fire young people.
"If nothing moves, we will propose preparing a day of general work stoppages in the coming days," said Bernard Thibault, head of the powerful CGT labor union.
A front-page editorial in the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche today predicted that Mr. Villepin would probably hold firm. But further conflict could damage the prospects for Mr. Villepin, who has been in office for 10 months, of running for president next year.
The employment measure, set to go into effect in April, would allow employers to lay off new workers younger than 26 without cause for two years.
Protesters say the law erodes vital employment rights and could be turned into a charter to exploit young workers.
The CGT union estimated that 1.5 million people protested nationwide on Saturday. The Interior Ministry put the total at 500,000, with 80,000 in Paris.
After a sunny afternoon of peaceful marching, violence flared Saturday evening at Place de la Nation in eastern Paris, prompting riot police officers to fire tear gas canisters to disperse demonstrators.
Security forces arrested 167 people at the protests on Saturday and were still holding 70 this morning, said Catherine Casteran, a spokeswoman for the National Police. She said that 34 members of the security forces and 18 demonstrators had been hurt in the violence. None of the injuries was serious, although one demonstrator was hospitalized with heart problems, she said.
There was little sign that the tension over the contract will ease this week. On Monday evening, union leaders will meet to discuss the timing of a possible general strike, said Maurice Marion, a spokesman for the CGT union.
Student groups could resume their street protests as soon as Thursday, the newspaper Le Monde reported.
So far the government has refused to cancel the measure, saying only that modifications were possible. But commentators say that Mr. Villepin now looks trapped after the ultimatum from unions, a call by university presidents to suspend the measure and a recent poll indicating that 68 percent of French citizens favor overturning the law.
"Watering-down the contract could be a quick escape route for Villepin," said Emmanuel Rivière, the director of political research at TNS-Sofres, a polling firm. "But that would be political liability for him, too, because then the contract probably wouldn’t do as much to lower unemployment."
Mr. Villepin pushed through the law to ease chronic high unemployment, particularly among the young. One in four young people in France is out of work. The figure is as high as 50 percent in suburbs with high percentages of immigrants or their children, and unemployment helped to fuel an outburst of rioting last year.
The government was also encouraged to make economic changes by foreign and French investors, who say the economy cannot reach robust levels of growth until businesses have the confidence to hire workers when times are good because they have the flexibility to shed others during an economic downturn.
But Mr. Villepin’s plan has come unstuck as union members fight to retain their job security and students accuse the government of age discrimination and of leaving them vulnerable to employers.
Mathilde Peaud, 20, who is studying to become an English teacher, said employers could use the new terms to discourage new employees from joining unions and get rid of female workers who become pregnant.
"We fear that we could even get fired for refusing sexual propositions," Ms. Peaud said.