French unions threaten general strike over jobs plan
A powerful union leader threatened France with a general strike today over a contested jobs plan that sparked violent protests in Paris over the weekend.
Student and employee unions have given Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin until tomorrow night to withdraw the measure designed to increase job hirings among the young but seen by critics as an erosion of workers’ rights that will not produce solid employment.
“If these dynamics continue, I think we will quickly get the withdrawal” of the measure, Bernard Thibault, head of the powerful CGT union, said on France-Inter radio. “If the government persists, we can envisage working together toward a national strike day.”
Protesters have urged President Jacques Chirac to block the new law, expected to take effect in April. Already, 16 universities are on strike over the measure and dozens of others are disrupted.
Police said that 52 people were injured – 18 of them demonstrators – in violence that followed the Paris protests a day earlier, with one protester admitted to hospital with heart problems.
A total of 167 people were arrested, with 70 of them detained for questioning, police said. Cars and bus shelters were damaged in yesterday’s violence along with 10 shops, including a McDonald’s fast food restaurant and the entrance to a Gap clothing store whose entrance was set alight, apparently accidentally.
Organisers of the nationwide protests put the number of participants at 1.5 million. Police said a half-million people took part in cities around France. The second demonstrations in three days, they were the biggest show yet of the country’s escalating anger over the new law.
“We know that what is at stake today is whether or not we put into question the whole of the work code,” Thibault, the union leader, said.
The so-called First Jobs Contract, intended for those under 26 years of age with little chance of finding a good job, is meant to encourage employers to hire because they can more easily fire. In effect, the law allows for dismissal within the first two years of employment without justification.
The French work code contains rigorous standards for firing employees. But Villepin hopes to use the measure to lower the 23% unemployment rate among the nation’s youths, a figure that rises to some 50% in depressed suburban neighbourhoods where unrest erupted last year, fuelled by discrimination and joblessness.
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