Chirac to sign controversial French labor law

[brooklynite]

PARIS - President Jacques Chirac said Friday he would press ahead with a contentious labor law making it easier to fire workers, but he offered some concessions in hopes of calming furious protests that led to nationwide strikes.

Chirac said he would reduce a trial period during which employees could be summarily dismissed from two years to one, and he would require employers to offer reasons for the dismissal.

In preserving the principle that workers under 26 would face a lack of job security, Chirac came down on the side of his prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, who has argued that businesses will welcome the added flexibility, encouraging hirings that will bring down France’s chronic youth unemployment rates.

The contested jobs law “can be an effective tool for employment,” Chirac said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12097360/

[Kagemusha]

1. Gotta say, this is about 3x more reasonable than I expected.

I've heard a lot of harping over this idea that you can fire someone for "any" reason (including open racism let's say) as well as "no" reason (flip a coin). Chirac's alterations (odd that he can do that in their system of government...) mean that the law will have what was probably the intended effect in the first place, making the employer completely unable to fire someone unless the employer's willing to jump through flaming hoops to prove that an employee really, really needs to go, which is another extreme but more or less what I've heard it's like in France...

Like I said, multiple times more reasonable than I ever expected out of that country over this issue.

Do I expect it to impress anyone? No. But at least there is less invitation to abuse and more clarity that obviously you can't just fire people because they're, say, gay.

[Zynx]

2. This is one of those nasty economic issues that has no easy resolution.

If you make it virtually impossible to fire anyone, hiring will suffer greatly. Employers will not take on marginal employees that may or may not pan out if they don't think they can fire them for poor performance. If you don't believe me on this, my father's old employer, Firstar(when it existed) was looking to open some offices in the Netherlands in the early 1990s, but when they looked at the labor laws, they decided to open no offices altogether.

However, at the same time you have to make protections against discrimination and such, but it is very difficult to do that without tying employers' hands.

[Kagemusha]

3. Speaking of not pleasing anyone

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article355021.ece

More nationwide strikes planned.

[bemildred]

4. Chirac needs to spend more time with his family. nt