Huge crowds march in France against youth jobs law
By Matthew Bigg and Kerstin Gehmlich

Reuters, UK
March 18 2006

PARIS (Reuters) – Huge crowds of students, trade unionists and
left-wing politicians took to the streets across France on Saturday
to press the conservative government to scrap a new law they fear
will erode job security for young workers.

Hundreds of thousands turned out in Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse,
Rennes and over 150 other cities and towns in a growing protest
movement that has created a serious crisis for Prime Minister Dominique
de Villepin.

The marches were mostly peaceful, but a few dozen youths overturned
and set fire to a car at the end of the main protest in Paris and
pelted police with missiles. Scattered violence was also reported in
Marseille and Rennes.

Organisers estimated the turnout nationwide at 1.3 to 1.4 million,
with up to 400,000 of them in Paris. The Interior Ministry counted
503,000 nationwide, with 80,000 in Paris.

The protesters demanded that Villepin withdraw a new youth job
contract, known as the CPE, which lets firms fire workers under 26
without explanation in their first two years on the job. He launched
it to spur reluctant employers to take on new staff.

In the western city of Rennes, students wore plastic garbage bags
with signs declaring: “I am disposable.”

“I risk working for two years for nothing, just to be fired at any
moment,” said Paris student Coralie Huvet, 20, who had “No to the CPE”
written on her forehead. Pointing to painted-on tears, she added:
“That’s depressing, that’s why I’m crying.”

Organisers, who decry the CPE as a “Kleenex contract” that lets young
workers be “thrown away like a paper tissue,” said they hoped to have
up to 1.5 million people out marching in the third national protest
in six weeks.

The Paris march began with students in front and workers behind,
but turned into a multi-generational mix including many parents who
accompanied their teenage children. Banners declared “No to throw-away
youths” and “Tired Of Being Squeezed Lemons.”

Opposition Socialist and Communist politicians also joined the protest,
only the third time in almost four decades — after 1968 and 1994 —
that students and workers marched together.

UNION LEADERS LOOK AHEAD

Union leaders, due to meet after the march to discuss future strategy,
threatened to keep up the pressure on the government with further
action next week.

“If they don’t listen to us we are going to have to think about moving
to a general strike across the whole country,” said Bernard Thibault,
head of the pro-Communist CGT union.

“We can’t hold back because the student movement will continue
and there could be some risks,” said teachers’ union head Gerard
Aschieri. “There should be a strike next week.”

Villepin, whose gamble on this unpopular contract could cost him his
chance to run for president next year, has pledged not to give in to
street pressure. At the same time, he hinted on Friday evening that
he could make some adjustments to the law.

Unemployment is the top political issue in France, where the national
average is 9.6 percent and youth joblessness is double that. The rate
rises to 40-50 percent in some of the poor suburbs hit by several
weeks of youth rioting last autumn.

In a bid to defuse the crisis, President Jacques Chirac said on Friday
the government was “ready for dialogue” on the law that critics say
must be withdrawn before any talks can start.

But the government has little room for manoeuvre without making major
concessions. An opinion poll published on Friday showed 68 percent of
French people oppose the law, a rise of 13 percentage points in a week.

The crisis has isolated Villepin politically at a time when his patron
Chirac is himself badly weakened. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy,
Villepin’s main rival on the right, has stood back discreetly as the
prime minister’s troubles mount.

His only consolation is that the opposition Socialists are so split
that they hardly seem able to profit from the crisis.

In an opinion poll to be published on Sunday, Villepin dropped six
points to 37 percent popularity.

Violence broke out in Lyon when a march of about 2,500 Turks protesting
against a memorial to Armenian victims of a 1915 massacre in the then
Ottoman Empire crossed paths with the anti-CPE demonstrations.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress