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On Saturday 1.5 million workers and students demonstrated in 160 cities across France, and 60 out of the country¡¯s 84 universities took part in the demonstrations. Students staged sit-ins at the Sorbonne for the first time since the uprising of May 1968. They are demanding the withdrawal of the First Employment Contract Law, which makes it easier for companies to dismiss new workers during a two-year trial period.
Unemployment of young people under 26 in France stood at 23 percent last year, twice the 11 percent in Britain and 12 percent in the U.S. Youth unemployment in low-income immigrant neighborhoods reaches 40-50 percent. The government is pushing the law to encourage businesses to hire young people with little or no experience, offering them the right to dismiss them if the experiment does not work out. The unions and students say the law is a "sacrifice of young people."
France¡¯s youth unemployment is so high because of a dual structure in the labor market. People once hired are practically guaranteed life-long employment, but getting regular jobs is extremely difficult. It is five times more difficult to get a job in France than the U.S., but the probability of getting fired in France is about one-fifth of the U.S., according to the Economist.
As a consequence, French companies fill 70 percent of new jobs with non-regular workers. More than half of them are laid off within a month. In other words, workers with entrenched privileges are strangling those without.
While France is negotiating to get the law through in some form, Germany has been pushing its "Agenda 2010" designed to liberalize the labor market. European countries that cultivated an expensive labor and welfare model have virtually admitted that the only way forward is the liberal market system of Britain and the U.S. Korea, which has been struggling with the question of protecting non-regular workers for years, should closely watch the labor pains France is now experiencing.
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