First Employment Contract - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The contrat première embauche (CPE; first employment contract) was a new form of employment contract pushed in spring 2006 in France by Prime Minister

Prime Minister of France

The Prime Minister of France in the Fifth Republic is the head of government and of the Council of Ministers of France. The head of state is the President of the French Republic...

Dominique de Villepin

Dominique Marie François René Galouzeau de Villepin is a French politician who served as the Prime Minister of France from 31 May 2005 to 17 May 2007....

. This employment contract, available solely to employees under 26, would have made it easier for the employer to fire employees by removing the need to provide reasons for dismissal for an initial "trial period" of two years, in exchange for some financial guarantees for employees. However, the enactment of this amendment to the so-called "Equality of Opportunity Act" (loi sur l'égalité des chances) establishing this contract was so unpopular that soon massive protests

2006 labour protests in France

The 2006 youth protests in France occurred throughout France during February, March, and April 2006 as a result of opposition to a measure set to deregulate labour...

were held, mostly by young students, and the government rescinded the amendment. Actually, President Jacques Chirac

Jacques Chirac

Jacques René Chirac is a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He previously served as Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988 , and as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.After completing his studies of the DEA's degree at the...

declared that the law would be put on the statute book, but that it would not be applied. Article 8 of the March 31, 2006 Equality of Opportunity Act, establishing the CPE, was repealed by an April 21, 2006 law on the Access of Youth to Professional Life in Firms. The rest of the Equality of Opportunity Act, which dispositions were also contested by the students' protests, was maintained.

Legislative process

CPE was introduced by the Government as an amendment

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

(n°3) to the "Statute on the Equality of Opportunities" law. This law was proposed by Prime Minister

Prime minister

A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...

Dominique de Villepin

Dominique Marie François René Galouzeau de Villepin is a French politician who served as the Prime Minister of France from 31 May 2005 to 17 May 2007....

allegedly to tackle a 23% unemployment rate among the young, and also as a response to the civil unrest in October 2005

2005 civil unrest in France

The 2005 civil unrest in France of October and November was a series of riots by mostly Muslim North African youths in Paris and other French cities, involving mainly the burning of cars and public buildings at night starting on 27 October 2005 in Clichy-sous-Bois...

. The reasoning of the government for introducing CPE was that unemployment was one of the major causes of lawlessness in poorer neighbourhoods, that workforce laws putting the burden of proof for valid reasons for dismissal on the employer discouraged hiring, especially of people with "risky" profiles, and thus that making dismissal easier would improve the employment prospects of such youngsters.

The bill was examined by the French National Assembly

French National Assembly

The French National Assembly is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of France under the Fifth Republic. The upper house is the Senate ....

between January 31 and February 9.
The amendment was adopted by the Assembly around 2 AM on February 9, 2006, after much heated debate. On the same day, in the afternoon, Prime Minister de Villepin announced to the National Assembly that he invoked article 49-3 of the Constitution of France

Constitution of France

The current Constitution of France was adopted on 4 October 1958. It is typically called the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, and replaced that of the Fourth Republic dating from 1946. Charles de Gaulle was the main driving force in introducing the new constitution and inaugurating the Fifth...

on that text; this meant that the law would be considered adopted in its current state, without being approved by the National Assembly, unless a motion of censure were adopted by the Assembly. Since Villepin's UMP party had an absolute majority in the Assembly, there was no chance that such a motion could be adopted. Predictably, a motion of censure was proposed by the left-wing opposition and was rejected by the Assembly on February 21.

The Law was then examined by the Senate between February 23 and March 5, at which date the Senate approved it. Since the texts from the Assembly and the Senate were different, and the law was deemed urgent by the Prime Minister, the bill was sent before a mixed Assembly/Senate commission charged with the drafting of a compromise text. The law was then adopted on March 8 by the Assembly, and on March 9 by the Senate.

Because opposition members of the Assembly and the Senate requested constitutional review of the text, the law was sent before the Constitutional Council

Constitutional Council of France

The Constitutional Council is the highest constitutional authority in France. It was established by the Constitution of the Fifth Republic on 4 October 1958, and its duty is to ensure that the principles and rules of the constitution are upheld.Its main activity is to rule on whether proposed...

. The Council considered the law constitutional, but made a number of reservations, on March 30. Those reservations impose guidelines under which the law was to be applied.

Meanwhile, the law was disapproved by a sizable proportion of the French population. Massive street protests began, mostly by students from high schools and universities, and Prime Minister de Villepin's approval rate began to plummet. The protest movement was certainly the biggest seen in France since 1968.

The whole act was signed into law on March 31 by president Jacques Chirac

Jacques Chirac

. However, Chirac paradoxically asked for a delay of application of the law (which he is not constitutionally empowered to do), to allow the conservative Union for a Popular Majority (UMP) to prepare a new law modifying the "Statute on the Equality of Opportunities" law (changing, in particular, the two years "probationary period" to only one year).

The student movement as well as all trade unions (including the CGT

Confédération générale du travail

The General Confederation of Labour is a national trade union center, the first of the five major French confederations of trade unions.It is the largest in terms of votes , and second largest in terms of membership numbers.Its membership decreased to 650,000 members in 1995-96 The General...

) and the Socialist Party asked not only for the suppression of the CPE but also of the CNE

Contrat nouvelle embauche

Contrat nouvelle embauche is a French employment contract, proposed by prime minister Dominique de Villepin and that came into force by ordinance on August 2, 2005 Contrat nouvelle embauche (abbreviated to CNE, New Employment Contract aka New Recruitment Contract or sometimes New-job contract in...

, a similar contract passed in November 2005 by the same government. On April 10, as the protests were still getting bigger, the government completely withdrew the law, and substituted for it fiscal incentives to firms employing young people.

Controversy

The CPE sparked debates among the political classes, and drew massive protests from students in the streets of France, along with sudden strikes. Criticism was levied at both the substance of the CPE and the way it was enacted.

Instead of putting the clauses creating CPE inside the bill it was proposing to Parliament, the government chose to submit it as an amendment of its own text. This bypasses some compulsory legal review by the Conseil d'État and reduces the time available for examination by members of the Parliament. Earlier in 2006, president of the Assembly Jean-Louis Debré

Jean-Louis Debré

Jean-Louis Debré is a conservative French political figure. He was President of the National Assembly of France from 2002 to 2007 and has been President of the Constitutional Council since 2007.-Biography:Debré was born in Toulouse...

, though a fellow member of UMP and an ally of Villepin, complained about the Villepin government submitting lengthy amendments of its own bills and said that it showed these bills were badly prepared. Furthermore, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin forced approval of the law by the Assembly on its first reading by invoking article 49-3 of the Constitution: under 49-3, a bill is considered approved in its present state by the Assembly unless the Assembly chooses to dismiss the Prime Minister. Such a move hardly ever occurs, since both the Assembly and the Prime Minister are from the same majority. Use of 49-3 is seen as an infringement on the legislative prerogatives of Parliament and is thus reserved for exceptional cases. As many have pointed out, especially when the Prime Minister announced the use of 49-3, Dominique de Villepin has never run for elected office.

Although the CPE is the primary target of the student movement against the law, other measures of the "Statute on the Equality of Opportunities" have also been contested. Among them, allowing apprenticeship

Apprenticeship

Apprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a skill. Apprentices or protégés build their careers from apprenticeships...

s from as young as 14 years old (allowing a youth to leave the standard public education

Public education

State schools, also known in the United States and Canada as public schools,In much of the Commonwealth, including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, the terms 'public education', 'public school' and 'independent school' are used for private schools, that is, schools...

system), night work from the age of 15 (instead of 16 now) and suspension of certain type of welfare measures (families with more than three children have the right to some governmental financial support in France) when students skip school

Truancy

Truancy is any intentional unauthorized absence from compulsory schooling. The term typically describes absences caused by students of their own free will, and usually does not refer to legitimate "excused" absences, such as ones related to medical conditions...

. This last measure has been for a long time in the program of the far-right movement Front National

Front National

Front National can mean:* Front National , a French political party* Front National , a World War II French Resistance group* Front National , a Belgian political party...

, thus also explaining part of the popular protests. The most controversial part of this new law lies in the way it brings flexibility to employers: this contract allows French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

employers to fire workers under the age of 26 without juridical motive during the first two years of the contract, among other things.

If the employee seeks juridical recourse against arbitrary firing, the burden of proof would be reversed. In an indefinite contract

Job security

Job security is the probability that an individual will keep his or her job; a job with a high level of job security is such that a person with the job would have a small chance of becoming unemployed.-Factors affecting job security:...

, the burden of proof was reversed during the probationary period, which lasted from just a few days to three months, depending on the type of job, requiring an employee seeking legal recourse

Legal recourse

A legal recourse is an action that can be taken by an individual or a corporation to attempt to remedy a legal difficulty.* A lawsuit if the issue is a matter of civil law* Many contracts require mediation or arbitration before a dispute can go to court...

to prove they were unjustly

Tort

A tort, in common law jurisdictions, is a wrong that involves a breach of a civil duty owed to someone else. It is differentiated from a crime, which involves a breach of a duty owed to society in general...

fired rather than the employer to prove just cause

Just cause

Just cause or Bare sagen is a common standard in labor arbitration that is used in labor union contracts in the United States as a form of job security.-Use in Labor Union Contracts:...

for the dismissal.

Supporters

The CPE was officially designed to encourage employers to hire more employees under 26 by offering tax cuts and flexibility to employers, and was expected to offer young people access the job market that they have been desperately missing previously (One in four young people in France is unemployed, but the figure rises to 50% in the poor suburbs.) Unlike in more conservative employment environments, such as those of the US or the UK, firing an employee under long-term contract is made hard for French employers once the probation period (maximum three months) elapses. "Firing people is difficult and costly, this has made firms over the years more and more reluctant to take people on"
The purported aim of the CPE law was to break this reluctance.

Supporters of the CPE believe it will reduce the high unemployment

Unemployment

Unemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...

, particularly among poor youths. Employers, they contend, will be more willing to take chances with young employees if they are not constrained by France's job security

Job security

laws. They claim that unemployment is partially caused by the restrictive labor laws which they believe have also helped keep economic growth

Economic growth

In economics, economic growth is defined as the increasing capacity of the economy to satisfy the wants of goods and services of the members of society. Economic growth is enabled by increases in productivity, which lowers the inputs for a given amount of output. Lowered costs increase demand...

at a low level by discouraging business foundation and expansion. Softening the "rigid employment code" has been the motto of MEDEF and employers in general for years, and is claimed by French liberals

Economic liberalism

Economic liberalism is the ideological belief in giving all people economic freedom, and as such granting people with more basis to control their own lives and make their own mistakes. It is an economic philosophy that supports and promotes individual liberty and choice in economic matters and...

(those supporting free-market policies) to be a key way to help both economic growth and employment.

Supporters of the CPE and opponents of the blockading of the universities called demonstrations in the streets in March and April. These demonstrations of support from the government only mustered hundreds, while the anti-government protests got millions.

Critics

Critics of the law include all trade unions (evincing a rarely-found unanimity between the various politically oriented unions - CGT

Confédération générale du travail

, CFDT

Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail

-External links:*...

, FO

Force Ouvrière

The General Confederation of Labor - Workers' Force is one of the five major union federations in France. In terms of following, it is the third behind the CGT and the CFDT....

, CFTC, CGC-CGE

Confédération Française de l'Encadrement - Confédération Générale des Cadres

The French Confederation of Management – General Confederation of Executives is one of the five major French confederations of trade unions....

etc.), many students (for example the students' union

Students' union

A students' union, student government, student senate, students' association, guild of students or government of student body is a student organization present in many colleges and universities, and has started appearing in some high schools...

UNEF

Union nationale des étudiants de france

The National Union of Students of France is the main national students' union in France....

), all the left-wing

Left-wing politics

In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...

political parties, and — to a lesser extent — some centrist opponents, such as the moderately conservative Union for French Democracy

Union for French Democracy

The Union for French Democracy was a French centrist political party. It was founded in 1978 as an electoral alliance to support President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in order to counterbalance the Gaullist preponderance over the right. This name was chosen due to the title of Giscard d'Estaing's...

(UDF), saying that the CPE will make it easier for employers to exert pressure on employees (lowering wages, sexual harassment

Sexual harassment

Sexual harassment, is intimidation, bullying or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. In some contexts or circumstances, sexual harassment is illegal. It includes a range of behavior from seemingly mild transgressions and...

, etc.) since they may dismiss their younger employees at any time, without any judicially contestable reason. Some opponents have dubbed it the "Kleenex

Kleenex

Kleenex is a brand name for a variety of toiletry paper-based products such as facial tissue, bathroom tissue, paper towels, and diapers. The name Kleenex is a registered trademark of Kimberly-Clark Worldwide, Inc. Often used as a genericized trademark, especially in the United States, "Kleenex"...

contract", implying that the CPE allows employers to discard young people like facial tissue

Facial tissue

Facial tissue and paper handkerchief refers to a class of soft, absorbent, disposable papers that is suitable for use on the face. They are disposable alternatives for cloth handkerchiefs...

. According to them, the law will only encourage the growth of the working poor

Working poor

- Definition in the United States :There are several popular definitions of "working poor" in the United States. According to the US Department of Labor, the working poor "are persons who spent at least 27 weeks [in the past year] in the labor force , but whose incomes fell below the official...

and the precarity

Precarity

The word precarity literally meant "precariousness", but is now used to mean existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare...

phenomena, and violates a requirement of French labor law introduced in 1973, as well as article 24 of the European social charter

European Social Charter

The European Social Charter is a Council of Europe treaty which was adopted in 1961 and revised in 1996. The Revised Charter came into force in 1999 and is gradually replacing the initial 1961 treaty...

, which states that the employer must provide a motive for dismissal of employees.

Sixty socialist deputies and sixty socialist senators have appealed against the law to the Constitutional Council

Constitutional Council of France

; see below.

Protests

The law has met heavy resistance from students, trade unions, and left-wing activists, sparking protest

Protest

A protest is an expression of objection, by words or by actions, to particular events, policies or situations. Protests can take many different forms, from individual statements to mass demonstrations...

s in February and March 2006 (and continuing into April) with hundreds of thousands of participants in over 180 cities and towns across France. On March 18, up to as many as 1.5 million demonstrated across France, over half of the country's 84 public universities

University

A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...

were closed because of student blockades, and Bernard Thibault

Bernard Thibault

Bernard Thibault, born in 1959, is the current secretary of the Confédération Générale du Travail , a French workers' union. He represents the moderate wing of the CGT, as opposed to the more radical wing noted in Marseilles' trade union....

, the leader of the CGT

Confédération générale du travail

, one of France's five major labour unions, suggested that a general strike

General strike

A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...

across the country would occur if the law was not repeal

Repeal

A repeal is the amendment, removal or reversal of a law. This is generally done when a law is no longer effective, or it is shown that a law is having far more negative consequences than were originally envisioned....

ed. A big march was prepared for April 4, while students' organizations had already called for a general strike.
In the biggest student movement since 1968, mass meetings were held in many universities (In Toulouse

Toulouse

Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...

over 4,000 students occupied the rugby stadium to hold their meeting). Motorways were blockaded and employers organisations offices were occupied. The actions were (unusually) supported by all of the main trade union federations and all the Left political parties (more or less enthusiastically). The protests spread to high schools, and involved large numbers of young people both from prestigious universities, and from technical high schools and other places of education drawing a mainly working class student body.

Strikes

Amid calls for a general strike, opponents agreed to a 'day of action' against the law, including strikes, demonstrations and university occupations across France on the 28 March to oppose the law. Strikes disrupted transport, public education and mail services while more than one million to three million marched against the law. The estimates vary; the police estimate in the lower one million range while the unions estimate much higher. On April 4 between 93,000 (police estimate) and 700,000 (union estimate) demonstrated in Paris and three million in all of France.

Official response

On March 21, the Prime Minister was refusing to change tack, saying that "with this law, there are three things which are impossible. The first is its withdrawal, because that would mean that we are surrendering to the logic of ultimatums and prerequisites. This is obviously what our electorate does not want, and they would not forgive us for it. The second is its suspension, quite simply because that is against our Constitution. And the third is reworking the bill, because to lose its balance would be to deprive it of any chance for success."

On March 30, the Constitutional Council

Constitutional Council of France

, the highest constitutional authority, validated most of the law, along with its 8th article instituting the First Employment Contract. The law was considered to abide by the Constitution of France; the Constitutional Council didn't pronounce on the question of conformity to international

International law

Public international law concerns the structure and conduct of sovereign states; analogous entities, such as the Holy See; and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond...

and european law, which it is not empowered to consider. The sixty Socialist deputies and sixty Socialist senators who had deposed the legal recourse before the Constitutional Council notably claimed that the law was against article 24 of the European social charter

European Social Charter

, which states that the employer must give a juridical motive before firing an employee, and against the International Labour Convention

International Labour Organization

The International Labour Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that deals with labour issues pertaining to international labour standards. Its headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland. Its secretariat — the people who are employed by it throughout the world — is known as the...

(n°158). Labor courts will have to create the jurisprudence concerning this point.

On the evening of March 31, President

President of the French Republic

The President of the French Republic colloquially referred to in English as the President of France, is France's elected Head of State....

Chirac

Jacques Chirac

announced in an address to the nation that he would promulgate the law, but asked the government at the same time to prepare a new law including two modifications: the trial period would be reduced to one year, and employers would now have to give a reason for the dismissal of the employment. However, Chirac did not specify whether this reason would be a juridical motive or a simple letter without any juridical value. He also asked employers not to start using the contract until these modifications came into force, but suggested no means of enforcement. Chirac's paradoxical call (officially promulgating the law while unofficially asking at the same time for its suspension) has only baffled both partisans and opponents of the text. The president's move was widely analyzed by the press as support for his prime minister Dominique de Villepin against its contender for the 2007 election Nicolas Sarkozy

Nicolas Sarkozy

Nicolas Sarkozy is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier....

, who was the leader of Chirac's political party, the UMP. Villepin had declared that he would have resigned had Chirac refused to promulgate the law. Some 2000 students were waiting on the Place de la Bastille

Place de la Bastille

The Place de la Bastille is a square in Paris, where the Bastille prison stood until the 'Storming of the Bastille' and its subsequent physical destruction between 14 July 1789 and 14 July 1790 during the French Revolution; no vestige of it remains....

for Chirac's address to the nation. After hearing it, they carried out a night demonstration, which collected as many as 6000 persons between the Hôtel de Ville

Hôtel de Ville, Paris

The Hôtel de Ville |City Hall]]) in :Paris, France, is the building housing the City of Paris's administration. Standing on the place de l'Hôtel de Ville in the city's IVe arrondissement, it has been the location of the municipality of Paris since 1357...

and the Opéra

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

. A few hundred demonstrators didn't quit until four in the morning.

Substitution

On April 10, the French government decided to withdraw the CPE and rewrite it by introducing new measures. This decision appears to be an about-face for Dominique de Villepin. http://www.premier-ministre.gouv.fr/acteurs/interventions-premier-ministre_9/discours_498/allocution-premier-ministre-matignon_55717.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/10/AR2006041000157.html

External links

Actual text of the CPE
Analysis sympathetic to the movement in GB magazine "Red Pepper"
Collection of photographies from the demonstrations
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2007/04/france_the_prec.html

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Legislative process

Controversy

Supporters

Critics

Protests

Strikes

Official response

Substitution

See also

External links