No sooner was the ink dry on the new French labor law, were we convinced that the law was not long for this world. The French government, reeling from double digit unemployment, especially among the nation’s youth, implemented the new law to give firms an incentive to hire young, untested workers. The proposed solution was the First Jobs Contract, under the auspices of the bill, employers could hire employees under age 26 on a trial basis. If for whatever reason the employee was deemed unacceptable he or she could be terminated at will.

French employers are hesitant to hire untested workers whose commitment to hard work may be lacking. Young employees therefore would be obliged to demonstrate their abilities forthwith to prove their value and worth to the firm. Such a concept however was quite novel in socialist, entitlement obsessed France, where employment is guaranteed for life, regardless of the ineptitude of the French worker. Almost as soon as Dominique de Villepin proposed the law it was met with fierce resistance from French “students.”

De Villepin, once the darling of the left because of his hard-line opposition to the war in Iraq, was soon burned in effigy by those very same leftists. France, unlike, most western nations is a pure democracy in the highest sense, rather than a representative republic. While the parliament and the president may decide on what matters become law, it is the French mob that determines the viability of legal statutes or whether or not such laws will ever be enforced. France has long been governed by mob rule…when the government institutes new laws, reforms or policies, it is unclear whether or not they will truly become law until the man on the street has had its say.

Mob rule and violent rioting is a matter of course for French politics, but then again what is to be expected from a country that reveres as revolutionaries those who stormed a prison freeing murderers and rapists in 1789? This mob mentality has also manifested itself in French foreign policy, where capitulation to terrorists, communists and fascists is accepted as a matter of routine. Today, French President Jacques Chirac has caved to the will of the mob, vowing to scrap the First Jobs Contract (CPE), as the new French labor law was known. While the French leadership simply said the jobs law would be replaced, there is no question that this act is a clear victory for the students, trade unionist and other radicals who caused widespread destruction and chaos on French streets, such capitulation on the part of the French government only emboldens future mobs and will ensure that mob rule will remain a fact of life in French society.

Invariably France will have to come to grips with staggering unemployment, economic stagnation and most importantly: impending bankruptcy as the French population ages and more and more French draw from cushy government pensions. Mob rule, however, will ensure that any proposal will likely fail, dooming French society in the long term.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-04-10T113139Z_01_L09541867_RTRUKOC_0_UK-FRANCE.xml