French unions to push more
2006-04-02 16:26
Paris - President Jacques Chirac signed a contested measure to promote jobs for youths into law on Sunday even though he has said it would be replaced by a modified version to defuse a crisis that has led to violent demonstrations and dealt France's prime minister a major setback.
However, unions hoped that another round of strikes and demonstrations set for Tuesday would provide a still more powerful push to get the measure - in any form - withdrawn.
The head of the CFDT union predicted that the struggle would be long, and not lose momentum with spring vacations starting next week.
Dozens of universities and high schools have been closed or blocked by protesting students.
The governing party's leader in the lower house, Bernard Accoyer, said starting on Tuesday he would meet with various unions to speak with critics, as Chirac asked, before a new bill is written. Previous efforts at dialogue failed.
The contested measure, known as the First Job Contract, appeared in the "Official Journal" on Sunday where all new laws are recorded.
Cutting youth unemployment
Its aim was to cut sky-high youth unemployment by making it easier for employers to hire those under 26 by making it easier to fire them - without having to say why.
Chirac, in a television address on Friday night, said he wanted a softer, revised law with two key modifications to replace the unpopular one, which Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has vigorously defended.
Critics say Villepin should have shown more flexibility. Chirac said he signed the contested law out of respect, he said, for French institutions, noting that it had been passed by parliament and approved by the Constitutional Council. However, he asked that it not be applied.
Chirac's double-barreled approach was a face-saving measure for Villepin, keeping the law alive, at least in theory, but widely seen as a rebuff of the prime minister.
A decision announced Saturday to turn the writing of a second bill over to parliament - removing it from the hands of the government - was viewed as a further insult.
Suspend the law
The move to place the new bill in the hands of parliament put Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy - Villepin's party rival - at centre-stage in pulling the country out of the crisis. Sarkozy had said the law should be suspended.
The ambitious interior minister hopes to be a presidential candidate in 2007 elections for the governing Union for a Popular Movement, or UMP, which he heads.
Villepin, in an interview with the weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, said he did not feel disavowed by Chirac, who is thought to have wanted him as his successor in the presidency.
"There is misunderstanding and incomprehension about the direction of my action. I profoundly regret it," he told Le Journal du Dimanche. Asked if he had made mistakes, he replied, "of course, in all political action there is some error."
But, he added, "the main error, the only one that would have been unforgivable, would have been to do nothing against the mass unemployment in our country."
Chirac has asked that the current law be modified to reduce a trial period for new young hires from two years to one and, in case of a firing, to require employers to say why the employee was let go.
CFDT union chief Francois Chereque told France Inter radio on Sunday that Sarkozy had contacted him and other union members a day earlier.
"Our contact will no longer be the prime minister but the UMP lawmakers and ... Nicolas Sarkozy," he said.
The mobilisation against the law must continue, he said.
"The object of (Tuesday's) demonstration is repealing" the law, he said. "There needs to be a lot of us, and we must go for the long haul since the parliamentary debate will take time."
Just how long the movement lasts "depends on the sense of responsibility of lawmakers," he added.
- SAPA