Posted on 03/17/2006 12:17:27 PM PST by libertarianPA
PARIS - Tear gas. Students clashing with police around the famed Sorbonne university in Paris. Barricades in the capital's streets. Is March 2006 proving to be May 1968 all over again? So far, no. While comparisons between the student protests of then and now are tempting, they are also misleading.
The young protesters of '68 wanted to turn French society upside down. "Break the old molds" was one of their many slogans.
Their children want not revolution but status quo: the same access to pensions, jobs, prosperity and generous welfare systems their parents enjoyed. In short, a comfortable European lifestyle that many feel is under grave threat.
It's a sign of Europe's malaise that French students have trouble seeing a rosy future. While they dance, whistle and bang drums on their boisterous marches through Paris' Left Bank, idealism, hope and answers seem sadly lacking.
With nearly 1-in-4 French youths and young adults unemployed, many fret about how they will find work, make their first down payment on an apartment, afford to start a family.
They study, earn diplomas, but often are resigned to finding nothing more rewarding after graduation than unpaid internships. The most disenfranchised — immigrant youths in depressed neighborhoods that went up in flames during riots last fall — don't even expect those.
In '68, France was still riding the wave of fast growth and almost full employment that followed World War II, the so-called "Thirty Glorious" years until the 1973 oil crisis when the economy grew at an annualized 5 percent clip.
Those days are long gone.
This week, students turned the '68 slogan "the boss needs you, you don't need him" on its head, hollering: "Give us an indefinite job contract!"
The catalyst for all this angst was a new type of contract that loosens France's highly protective — critics say rigid — labor law, the hallowed "Code du Travail."
The contract will let companies fire workers under 26 years old without giving a reason during their first two years in a job. President Jacques Chirac's conservative government argues that the new degree of flexibility will prompt employers to hire thousands of youths, knowing they will be able to get rid of them if things don't work out.
For British or American workers used to more open labor markets and fewer protections, the notion that their first job might not last long — and definitely won't last for life — may not seem strange.
But French youths are aghast that the protections afforded to their parents — however unaffordable in today's ultra-competitive global economy — are slipping out of reach.
They see jobs and economic growth shifting to rising powers like China, with its legions of cheap laborers and a Communist Party that forbids them from unionizing, and wonder how they will survive. For many, globalization is a threat, not an opportunity.
Chirac's government says it is precisely because of the challenge of globalization that France must reform. But the youths — who fear becoming as disposable as tissue paper — aren't buying it.
Break the old molds? Were they rioting over cheese?
I want my socialism and I want it now!
Hey, hey, ho, ho, hard work has got to go!
I hope there were no Economics students amongst the protestors.
Sounds like the union/protectionist mindset in the US.
I think the real problem is whether you want to work hard or not, there are no jobs on offer. If these young people were in the US, they would be adopting a different attitude, getting ready to work hard and make lots of money, because it's possible to do that here.
I don't think they would dare teach economics in France.
I think the unemployment rate for young people is 26% over there!
Looks like they no longer have a say. The Second (i.e. Islamic) French Revolution promises to make the First (i.e. 1789) French Revolution look like afternoon tea.
"...a comfortable European lifestyle...is under grave threat"
It is. As in la tombe.
Ahh the wonders of socialism.
Pigs at the trough, raise pigs at the trough. Socialism will die an long and horrible death at the hands of Islamists.
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