Demonstrations in France

Right now in France, there are large demonstrations against a new employment law (Contrat de Première Embauche or CPE) targeting the young (less than 26 years old) people. If the law is passed, employers will gain more flexibility in hiring and firing young people during a two years period. The employer won't be required to motivate the layoff anymore, which will be effective immediatly. After the two years period, the CPE would transfer to a standard Contrat à Durée Indéterminée (or CDI) where it's tougher to fire employees.

The logic behind this law is to create more flexibility in the job market and encourage companies to hire staff without the threat of costly dismisals in case the company goes south. It also allows a boss to evaluate the performances of an employee on a longer period of time although two years seems a lot for that.

This has created an uproar in France and more than 70% of the population seems to want the law modified or rejected. It might seems hard to understand for an American or a British where job contracts in their respective countries are much more flexible, but this is a strong change in France.

However, I see two problems with it: i) why is the law targeted only to the young people? ii) why a two years trial period?

i) By targeting the young only, this law is creating a discrimination between age categories. The argument for this is that unemployment is higher with young people than in other age categories but official numbers of 25% unemployed might be misleading. The Financial Times has reported last week end that because of longer studies, young people are out of the job market for much longer that is other countries. Adjusted values are "7.8 percent of French under-25s are actually out of work, as compared with 7.4 percent in Britain and 6.5 percent in Germany." (reported in the IHT as well)

ii) One year should be more than enough to assess the skills of an employee. Even the UK is trying to reverse the two years period back to one year (official text here and explanation here) although Germany is increasing it from six months to two years, with little if any demonstration planned.

There is no magic bullet to solve that problem but I think the law needs to be adapted from its current version but since prime minister Villepin seems to hold on to its position, more demonstrations are likely. France is definitely a difficult country to reform...