France: Many rights, few jobs
France's problem with basic economics
Not sure if you've noticed, but the French are outraged (again). When I lived in France, it was the farmers and truck drivers constantly blockading cities with leeks, potatoes, and, well, trucks.
This time? It's the youth.
What are they protesting? Work.
French President Jacques Chirac (or, rather, Prime Minster Villepin) last year introduced the CPE, which basically makes it easier for companies to fire younger workers. After the youth rampaged, the government capitulated and introduced the CNE, which allows for companies with fewer than 20 employees to fire employees without reason (during a 2-year trial period).
Sounds heartless, right? Letting big companies fire little workers?
The problem with the reasoning is that by not allowing companies to fire employees, France essentially makes it impossible to hire them. Expanding into France is a big risk because the costs of getting out (should anything go wrong) are too high. Why take that kind of risk when other, equal options are readily available with none of the same risk?
Employment is not a right. It's a privilege. To earn good work, you take a calculated risk: education, training, networking, etc. Perhaps the risk is wasted, and you don't get a good job. But the risk is worth the return when you do.
Markets don't work when they're heavily controlled, as in France. France's unemployment woes are caused and exacerbated by foolish state policies like over-protection of workers. French youth, trying to help themselves by desperately avoiding the possibility of failure, are guaranteeing the very failure (unemployment) they fear.
What does this have to do with open source? Nothing. I just get annoyed by inanity.
5 comments:
To earn good work, you take a calculated risk: education, training, networking, etc. Perhaps the risk is wasted, and you don't get a good job. But the risk is worth the return when you do.
Matt: with all due respect, but how many people do you actually know who didn't have more or less the same chances as you and I did in our young years? I agree that 15% of the working population is lucky enough - given enough energy they apply themselves - to get the jobs they really want. My wife works for a sheltered workplace however, and - believe me - some employees need way more protection than this 15%. Like her employees. And like those 50% of blue collar workers.
France has a past of gouvernment involvement which perhaps hasn't been the best example of a can-do society, however that doesn't call for banning such social actions. Not everyone is lucky enough to choose and build his or her own future.
Kind regards, Steven.
True enough, to an extent. I'm not suggesting that everyone starts life with the same opportunities. That's clearly not true. Nor am I suggesting that governments shouldn't provide some sort of safety net.
What I am suggesting is that by essentially making it impossible for individuals to fail, you effectively guarantee that the group will fail. France is a bright and shining example of how badly protectionism can go. The very security they seek is trampled by the security-seeking measures they enact.
I have a friend living there now. She tells me a decent percentage of the smart, capable 20-30 year olds she knows do nothing, because chomage (welfare) is generous. There's no compelling reason to do much of anything.
Chomage aside, making it hard to fire workers, as I said, makes it virtually guaranteed that an employer will look elsewhere if they can. If I have the option of getting into a 5-year lease or a month-to-month lease at the same price, I'm going to take the month to month because I can't foresee the future. If I have the chance to hire an unfire-able French youth versus a fire-able British youth, I'll take the latter. My intent is not to fire them, but in case the business goes south, they're incompetent, or whatever, I want options. France's CPE gives me, as an employer, few options.
As a result, I'll do my business elsewhere.
As I can see, you're conservative. So you should be favorable to the right to live. And now, you say employment, which is the main way people can obtain what's needed to live, is a privilege ? There is some contradiction in this. Your reasoning is bound by the rules of our current economy. If employment was safe everywhere, which is conceivable, companies would not go "somewhere else".
"Perhaps the risk is wasted, and you don't get a good job. But the risk is worth the return when you do.". As I understand it, people must take risks, but companies should not ?? Do we live for companies or do they exist for us people ? France is one of the countries that still has the courage to refuse such logic, and I really think it's time for this self-destroying, non-cooperative equilibria that is called liberalism, to be part of the past...
First, you have to look past raw unemployment figures. Yes, we have, in France, a higher unemployment rate than in USA or UK. But we less poor. Less homeless people. Less people with no access to health care or decent education. That's what really matter, more than unemployment.
Many people, in more capitalist countries like UK or USA, have a job AND poorer living conditions than unemployed french people. Can you say it's a good system ? In UK, 25%, yes, one FORTH of workers has or wants to have 2 jobs, because one is not enough to live decently. That's the price they pay for the 5% unemployment rate inside the capitalist system. That's what I call a total failure.
Then, you've to consider that being able to fire someone is an enormous power, which is much, much more than just "you can fire him if you really need to". You can already do that in France. There are many, many ways to fire people. Too much, in my opinion. The real goal of the CPE (and of the CNE) is not to make it easier to fire people for the sake of it. But to allow employers to break workers rights through the threat of firing them. You refuse to do unpaid extra hours ? Fine, you're fired. You are a cute woman and refuse to go out with the boss ? Fine, you're fired. You are a woman and you're pregnant ? Fine, you're fired. And so on. And of course, no union, no strike. That's the real goal of those laws.
As the anonymous poster says, the problem is not in protecting workers. It's not in granting human beings with security, with right to live decently, with protection against a stronger entity (a corporation being a much, much stronger entity than a single person). The problem is in the neoliberal order. It's in this system which makes humans "ressources". In this system for which companies and money are goals in themselves, are the higher values, and not, as they should always have been, just means to produce what's need FOR people.
That french people are able to protest against this neoliberal order, against this attempt to break their rights, to reduce them from the statuts of human beings to the status of cannon fodder for the economical war is probably the best side of France. In the latest 30 years, the share of the created wealth that goes to the capital doubled. While the share that goes to workers was reduced by the same amount. People are poorer than before, while profits are skyrocketing. Living conditions of most are going downwards, while a few are richer than ever. That's the problem. That's a problem we won't fix without defying the law of money. Without taking back the control of our economy, of our country.
Neoliberalism is the dictatorship of stock markets, it's the absolute control of the wealthiest few upon the lives of everyone. We don't accept that. We won't accept it without fighting for our freedoms, our rights, our democracies. The youth of France fought and won a battle in this war. We should thank them.
I would like you to investigate a bit more. Obvously, media are the same everywhere. They trunk informations (probably because we are too stupid to understand the whole thing).
Then you probably would like to correct the errors in your post and maybe (who knows :) would like to change your mind.
I'll give you a track : CPE is only one of the many reasons that render me and many others "outraged (again)".
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