While a brainwashed America sits idly by as the ruling corporate oligopoly suffocate their unions, millions of French are in the streets protesting a proposal to introduce limited "employment at will" (the right of the employer to hire and fire for any reason or no reason) for those under 26! Of course, the French recognize this as the beginning of a slippery slope to American style capitalism and they're nipping it in the bud. Which nation's people are really afraid of fighting for their country? Meanwhile, some poor underpaid and underemployed fat-ass sitting on his couch in south Georgia, sucking back Big Macs and a Super-sized Coke, not able to even locate Iraq on a map, wallows in what he has been told is his comparatively greater masculinity as some news bimbo glosses over the underlying political/economic issues to tell him how crazy those French have always been.
Watch the US news media focus on "violence" and "unruliness"... paid fascist enablers... Its shameful that the only people who will take the streets to defend their rights in America are not even Americans! Viva Mexico too...
Conservative Talking Point, "But aren't those crazy French just making impossible demands that will drive their economy into recession?" or "It's impossible for a French employer to fire incompetent and/or lazy workers."
Just Cause In France:
Under French law, the employer has only a month to terminate the employment of a new employee who is 26 or older without having to provide a reason (including: economic justification, documented poor performance or misconduct). After that, French labor law provides protection for the employee so that employment isn't ended without objective cause.
A small employer (under 20 employees) can hire and dismiss people before they have worked for the employer for two years without having to provide a reason for the dismissal.
Conservative Talking Point, "Unemployment in France will soar. Why would anyone invest their money in a country where laws are so restrictive and workers given so much protection?"
The unemployment rate in France is 10 percent. (Source: http://libcom.org/...) The standard of living for the average Frenchman is higher than that of the average Brit (id.)
International Wage Competition and Capital Investment:
The US labor movement is concentrating on organizing those workers whose jobs cannot be outsourced. There are efforts underway to organize workers all over the world in order to remove wages from competition. Human labor should not be bought and sold as a commodity - it is inherently valuable and entitled to respect (for more on the moral perspective, see John Paul II's "Laborem Exercens") As for the economics, I won't attempt to reinvent the wheel... a fellow named William Pfaff wrote a great article (http://www.commondreams.org/...) on this very topic just yesterday - here's a particularly salient excerpt:
"The crucial effect of [globalization] for society in the advanced countries is that it puts labor into competition with the poorest countries on earth. We need go no further with what I realize is a very complex matter, other than to note the classical economist David Ricardo's "iron law of wages," which says that in conditions of wage competition and unlimited labor supply, wages will fall to just above subsistence. There never before has been unlimited labor. There is now, thanks to globalization - and the process has only begun. It seems to me that this European unrest signals a serious gap in political and corporate understanding of the human consequences of a capitalist model that considers labor a commodity and extends price competition for that commodity to the entire world. In the longer term, there may be more serious political implications in this than even France's politicized students suspect. What seems the reactionary or even Luddite position might prove prophetic."
Until all workers in the world are organized, advanced countries will only maintain their high standard of living if they insist on enforceable labor standards as part of international trade agreements. Multinational corporations must exploit labor at the cheapest possible price in order to sell for the lowest possible price (the Wal-Mart model.) This is a race to the bottom - the French are taking a stand. Seattle took a stand. The people who were gassed and beaten by the Miami police at the FTAA meeting - they took a stand. Yesterday, one million British went out on strike to try to keep their pensions. Right now, the governments controlled by multi-national corporations have globalized trade in products and commodities. Soon, trade in services will be liberalized - no tariffs, no regulations - talking to customer support in India is just the beginning. When a great number of Americans are forced to live at just above subsistence level, will they take to the streets? Everyone who earns a wage will be affected. Will you take to the streets? I will - I don't intend to stand in line to spit shine Tom Friedman's shoes for a nickel.