What's at issue is a controversial new law that would loosen France's labor code and allow companies to fire job-seekers under 26 within two years of hiring them, without giving cause or shelling out the restrictive severance payments usually due when an employee is laid off. Since those protections often make the country's employers wary of bringing on new hires, Villepin has made the "First Employment Contract" law the centerpiece of his effort to cut unemployment among 25-year-olds-and-less from its dismal rate of 22% — and as much as twice that much in the troubled cits of the "banlieues," the outlying suburbs (where many descendants of North African and sub-Saharan immigrants live) which exploded in violence last fall.
The government rammed the law through parliament last week under special emergency procedures, and now students and unions are demanding its full retraction. Meant as a bold symbol of the government's resolve to take a new approach, the law is proving a rallying point for opponents of the conservative government, which is looking tired and tattered just over a year away from presidential elections in May 2007. Sorbonne history student Leonard Roche, 22, says the measure will make it even easier for French employers to deny job security to youth who already spend years shuffling between unpaid internships and short-term contracts. "The opposition is growing, and not just among students," he says.
Indeed, many of the protesters say their actions amount to a last stand for French workers against the predations of what they call "Anglo-Saxon ultraliberalism," as practiced in the United States, Great Britain and most of the rest of the world. But while the protesters take the limelight, often accompanied by anarchists whove never sat through a class, other students complain that theyre being prevented from taking key exams they need to graduate — and, yes, get jobs.
Though recent French governments have a tradition of yielding before student protests, Villepin vows to remain firm. Some within his ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party — particularly those close to Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, a likely rival in next years presidential elections — have called for dialogue or even a suspension of the measure. But backing off would put Villepin, whose poll numbers have dipped steeply in the last month, on the defensive for the rest of his term. Whether he has to sweeten the deal somehow will become clear over the next few days: even high school students will be cutting school for tomorrows protests, and union members will be joining Saturdays marches aimed at scrapping the law and beating back yet another government attempt to change the way they, and the French economy, works.