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Editorials / Columns
CPE which stands for First Employment Contract in French does not raise any eyebrows when I speak of it to someone in the United States. In France though, thousands of students, parents and labor unions have gone on strike in the last few weeks, hoping that the French government would withdraw the bill. Why are the French youngsters so radically reluctant against the new labor law? Let’s look at it from two perspectives: the American capitalist perspective and the French socialist perspective.
Fifty year-old engineer, Joe Smoe, works for a Houston petrol company and is laid off from one day to the other without notice. It takes him only two weeks to find a new job. Had Joe lived in France and had he lost his job there, he would not have found a new job in the following two years. He is considered too old to be a productive part of the French economy and his social charges for companies would be too high. He would then figure in to France’s unemployment rate. But don’t forget Joe lives in France; therefore he wouldn’t have lost his job in the first place because he was working under a contract that protected him from layoff.
One has to understand the fundamental differences of the two systems. Contrary to the US, a person living in France is always tied to a contract when employed. There are two main contracts: the unlimited time contract, called CDI, and the limited time contract, called CDD. It is very difficult for employers to lay off an employee under a CDI or CDD once the 3 months trial period is over. Therefore, many companies are reluctant to hire new employees.
Nevertheless, those contracts do not only guarantee work, they prove themselves necessary for receiving bank loans or credit, for renting an apartment or buying a car.
Today, France wants to reform its work law and allow companies to hire a person who is younger than 26 and can be fired in the employment period of two years. To someone in the US, this procedure does not sound unacceptable because it is common. To a young Frenchman though, it is new and unfair. They fear they will be used by the companies to provide a cheap and qualified workforce with the threat of a possible lay off hanging over their heads.
Which bank will loan them money to buy a car, and who will rent them an apartment they don't have guaranteed employment? Are the French politicians really trying to diminish the over 35 percent unemployment rate amongst graduates or are they trying to satisfy their friends who own the big companies in France, one year before the presidential elections?
A change is certainly necessary in France today to reduce high unemployment rates. The CPE may be one step towards economic recovery, but it certainly is not the remedy to France’s soar and ill economy. The situation is complex and one has to try to see it through the eyes of a young Frenchman living in a country which used to protect its youngsters rather than threatening their liberties. Accepting changes is always difficult, no matter where.
© Copyright World Internet News 2006-07
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Hélène Roth, born 1978, earned her B.A degree in Languages and International Studies at the University of Caen (France) and her Master's degree in International Relations with a focus on International Communication, Cooperation and Development at the Institute of International
Relations/University of Strasbourg (France).
French-born, she grew up in Germany and did her University studies in France and the United States,where she stayed as an exchange student for the period of one year.
She worked in the field of Promotion and International Communication with PBS,the US Navy and the Talon (weekly Bridgewater College Newspaper) in the United States; the City Council of Strasbourg, the European Parliament and
the Region of Alsace in France; The Alliance Francaise of Ciudad Juarez in Mexico.
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