Over one million people took to the streets in France this week in protest against an ever-increasing totalitarian French government, in some of the largest anti-government protests the country has ever seen.
The Paris march was led by the biggest autonomous bloc that has been seen in the city for several decades, with a strong international anti-capitalist participation.
One Million People Rise Up In France Amid Media Blackout | Your News Wire
Why French Workers Are So Mad
Last month, Emmanuel Macron, a onetime investment banker who is now the Socialist government’s young minister of the economy, visited Lunel, a small town in southern France. He was taken to task in the street for the “loi travail,” the labor law — recently pushed through by his government — that he was in Lunel to promote. A trade unionist wearing a T-shirt challenged him: “You, you’ve got lots of cash, you buy yourself nice suits.” Without missing a beat, Mr. Macron responded, “The best way to afford a nice suit is to work.”
A video of the interaction has been practically running on a loop on YouTube ever since. To most people in France, this exchange says it all about the gap between Mr. Macron and the working classes. In his eyes, if you don’t have a suit, it’s because you don’t work.
In France these days, not only is it getting harder and harder to find a job, but even those people who have one are unlikely to be able to afford a nice suit. Work pays less and less, except for the elites represented by Mr. Macron. As in the United States, income inequality in France is growing.
The new law is not the first to favor greater flexibility. The past 30 years have seen the gradual deregulation of France’s labor market, and that evolution has been accompanied not by a sinking rate of unemployment but by its steady rise. The strikers can’t imagine why this time would be any different.
Their protests are focused on the part of the law allowing companies to set their own terms for workers’ vacation allowances and other benefits, rather than adhering to a national standard. The strikers fear that this measure will accelerate the disappearance of “bons boulots,” good jobs, and increase the number of precarious ones. Once again, nothing new there. The labor market in France has been offering less and less job security for decades. Today, 85 % of new hiresare temporary employees and the duration of their work contracts keeps shrinking — 70 percent of new contracts are for one month or less. How could a labor law that will encourage even more insecurity stimulate employment?
The government provides no satisfactory response to that question, except to point out that the current situation is not viable and that refusing to change is the worst possible option. For the last 30 years, the unemployment rate has typically fluctuated between 9 percent and 12 percent, with a brief dip in 2007 and 2008. The president, François Hollande, has said that persistent long-term unemployment has created a “social and economic emergency.” Overcoming a long-lasting structural crisis of this type is much more daunting than getting out of a cyclical one.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/09/opinion/why-french-workers-are-so-mad.html
The Paris march was led by the biggest autonomous bloc that has been seen in the city for several decades, with a strong international anti-capitalist participation.
One Million People Rise Up In France Amid Media Blackout | Your News Wire
Why French Workers Are So Mad
Last month, Emmanuel Macron, a onetime investment banker who is now the Socialist government’s young minister of the economy, visited Lunel, a small town in southern France. He was taken to task in the street for the “loi travail,” the labor law — recently pushed through by his government — that he was in Lunel to promote. A trade unionist wearing a T-shirt challenged him: “You, you’ve got lots of cash, you buy yourself nice suits.” Without missing a beat, Mr. Macron responded, “The best way to afford a nice suit is to work.”
A video of the interaction has been practically running on a loop on YouTube ever since. To most people in France, this exchange says it all about the gap between Mr. Macron and the working classes. In his eyes, if you don’t have a suit, it’s because you don’t work.
In France these days, not only is it getting harder and harder to find a job, but even those people who have one are unlikely to be able to afford a nice suit. Work pays less and less, except for the elites represented by Mr. Macron. As in the United States, income inequality in France is growing.
The new law is not the first to favor greater flexibility. The past 30 years have seen the gradual deregulation of France’s labor market, and that evolution has been accompanied not by a sinking rate of unemployment but by its steady rise. The strikers can’t imagine why this time would be any different.
Their protests are focused on the part of the law allowing companies to set their own terms for workers’ vacation allowances and other benefits, rather than adhering to a national standard. The strikers fear that this measure will accelerate the disappearance of “bons boulots,” good jobs, and increase the number of precarious ones. Once again, nothing new there. The labor market in France has been offering less and less job security for decades. Today, 85 % of new hiresare temporary employees and the duration of their work contracts keeps shrinking — 70 percent of new contracts are for one month or less. How could a labor law that will encourage even more insecurity stimulate employment?
The government provides no satisfactory response to that question, except to point out that the current situation is not viable and that refusing to change is the worst possible option. For the last 30 years, the unemployment rate has typically fluctuated between 9 percent and 12 percent, with a brief dip in 2007 and 2008. The president, François Hollande, has said that persistent long-term unemployment has created a “social and economic emergency.” Overcoming a long-lasting structural crisis of this type is much more daunting than getting out of a cyclical one.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/09/opinion/why-french-workers-are-so-mad.html
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