From the Associated Press:
PARIS - Nationwide strikes disrupted airline, train and bus services, and sent more than 200,000 protesters into the streets across France on Tuesday as unions joined in solidarity with students angered by a new youth labor law.
More from the same article:
According to police estimates, 31,000 marched Tuesday in the southwestern city of Bordeaux, 28,000 in the southern port city of Marseille, 26,000 in the Alpine city of Grenoble, 17,000 in Lyon and more than 120,000 in nearly a dozen other cities and towns.
Protesters in Paris said they wanted to defend the status quo.
"We are here for our children. We are very worried about what will happen to them," said Philippe Decrulle, an Air France flight attendant. "My son is 23, and he has no job. That is normal in France."
Precisely because it makes it very difficult to let unproductive workers go, France has a 22 percent unemployment rate for young workers — the highest in Western Europe, according to the AP. And the French they want to "defend the status quo?" When something is not working, the usual recommended approach is to try something different. That is exactly what France is attempting to do. Instead of recognizing the new law for the golden opportunity that it is, France's unemployed youths and labor unions have decided to scream and shout their way into guaranteed lifetime employment.
Now imagine that you are an owner of a company in France. Would you like to be forced to extend lifetime employment contracts to the following youths?
If you are an employer, and if you are looking to hire people who have never worked before but who firmly believe that the world owes them a living, then feel free to post your job listings in the comments below.
So let me get this straight, they are jobless, but want everyone WITH a job to keep their jobs for life???!
Wouldn't they want the OTHER Frenchmen to get fired, so they can take the job?!
Posted by: Vonage Review | April 09, 2006 at 09:36 PM