Not bored
French youth, workers react to labour law
Kendra Ballingall Staff
By the time this issue of the Manitoban reaches stands, if calls for strike action are realized, over a million students, workers and unionists will have inundated French city streets in likely the largest mass resistance to the CPE since demonstrations against the labour law began in February.
The Contrat Première Embauche (CPE), or the First Employment Contract, which will take effect in April, allows employers to fire employees under the age of 26, without warning or explanation, during the first two years of their employment.
Some claim the CPE is a necessary and realistic reform to the labour market, an adjustment to the demands of the global economy. Are 1.5 million demonstrators overreacting? On the contrary, the design and adoption of the law lead to significant questions: To what are workers — those who sell their labour — entitled, and how must they achieve these rights? Who, exactly, stands to benefit from the CPE?
The CPE is being presented as the saving grace of young workers in France today. Supporters claim that it will encourage employers to take a chance on young workers, reducing the ghastly unemployment rate affecting French youth — up to 25 per cent among urban youth under 26, and as high as 50 per cent among immigrant youth in Parisian suburbs who have less valued or marketable skills.
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who proposed the law, holds a rather chivalrous position on the matter. In a letter published in Le Monde on March 23, after a long period of refusing requests for consultation, he offered to meet with university and high school organizations. He described youth as “victims” in the “battle for employment” and wrote, “the nation is obligated to take action and respond to the situation. It’s a matter of justice and national unity.”
This, despite unrest in the streets and popular opposition to the CPE; a French poll showed that 60 per cent of French citizens are against the law. Some student and trade union representatives have expressed interest in negotiations, and although de Villepin has shown slight willingness to negotiate reform of the law (or at least the length of its trial period), he is opposed to revoking it.
Other union groups see negotiations as futile, calling for a “refus total.” A reformed CPE, after all, would fail to address the abuse inherent in policies that lead to job insecurity and, in some cases, poverty.
This week’s strike action encompasses France’s five major trade unions, as well as members representing sectors such as the postal service, railway workers, finance, air travel, telecommunications, education and students. So far, 68 universities have gone on strike nation-wide, including the student occupation of the Sorbonne on March 10.
Such widespread actions have inevitably led to comparisons with the events of May ’68, when youth and workers collaborated, occupying public and private spaces, to lead France to the brink of revolution. Protestors of varying age, occupation, ethnicity and class called for the total revolution of everyday life; they were resisting de Gaulle’s regime, bourgeois consumerism and, ultimately, boredom.
Youth opinion on the CPE, however, is far from uniform. Some students are simply afraid of missing exams or of wasting a year of school or valuable summer working months if final exams are rescheduled.
Some protesters are opposed only to the specific policy; unlike the radicalized Sorbonne students of May ’68, perhaps many of today’s youth are concerned, not with commodification and spectacle, but with their own future careers and access to middle-class income and the associated privileges.
Other youth claim that those who oppose the law have the privilege to do so, believing that insecure employment is better than no job at all. In a nation with a huge debt, where the labour market is tight and retirement will be expensive, it is not surprising that some students are anxious about their prospects upon entering the job market.
To many, however, the lessons of May ’68 still resonate: workers and students (and student workers) realize their common interests. With calls for a general strike, they are looking beyond the specific law, seeing the loss of their rights in context: young workers will not be the only people affected by “flexploitation” brought on by the neo-liberal economy. Next could well be those at the end of their working lives, as is being resisted with concurrent strike action in England.
Regardless of difference of opinion among those who oppose the law, youth are being targeted as a homogenous group by a government in the service of employers because they present a cohort of exploitable labour. The CPE is not an altruistic concession to young workers, but to those who stand to gain — in profit, product, leisure time or prestige — from young people’s work.
With the CPE, an entire segment of the population will be entering the job market facing uncertain futures. How gracious of de Villepin to liberate French students from the predictable drudgery of permanent employment and secure income. If the CPE is not revoked (and de Villepin’s job depends on it), French youth will, at least, never be bored.
