French Strikes

I love the French. The students and their adult supporters have taken to the streets to say they don’t want job insecurity – some three million of them out of a population of 60 million. The students estimate that for everyone in the street and we can’t assume it is the same 3 million each day there are another five in 100% support of them. Mathematically that means one in 4 agree whole-heartedly against the government. As for numbers as I talk to my neighbors while on my mini vacation, I have yet to find anyone who disagrees with the students. They probably exist, but I haven’t found them yet.

The French love their social contract. It is nice to know if you lose your job and it has to be for cause and even then you will have a roof over your head and food in your bellies. You will have health insurance. No one needs to be homeless in this country. Admittedly for business, it is expensive and frustratingly unwieldy, but good businesses survive. There are less super rich but there are also less super poor. I don’t hear a lot of people dreaming about being rich but having a home, a family and free time to enjoy them.

And if strikes are a pain and trains schedules and bus schedules are perturbed so be it. It is what a democracy should have, the people telling the government what they want. Chirac said he heard, but what he offered wasn’t enough. Neither did De Gaulle in 1968 and it not only changed the presidency it changed the country. Like in 1968 I suspect this strike is training a whole new generation of leaders that will influence France for decades to come.

The students, although they want work, they want fairness in the workplace. And there are other implications. If they are hired under the system, few landlords will rent to them because they do not have a secure salary. Likewise employers can take advantage of lower wages to keep all salaries depressed or have a turning door of cheap workers. Of course some would be kept, there’s no question, but how many.

In the US businesses have the legal status of people with the benefits but not the responsibilities to the society in which they operate. In France it is the reverse.

De Villepin may be a sexy man, but he made the mistake of not checking with the unions and the students before announcing the new law. Interestingly, many business leaders have said that they wouldn’t change their hiring practices, sorta like the 35-hour work week was supposed to increase jobs. It did give lower level employees more free time, but les cadres, the managers, took up much of the slack of work that had to be done.

Meanwhile in Britain people are striking against reducing pensions.

Latin America is slowly rejecting the IMF and World Bank policies of privatization and cuts in social contracts.

The EU was founded on the idea of free movement of trade, capital and people, but globalization is only the free movement of trade and capital. People are locked into their home countries and if jobs flee to cheaper locations, they can’t move after them. Now if workers globalized and demanded the same salary structure, job security, pensions and health insurance everywhere, it would truly be the level playing feel they talk about in free trade which is far different from fair trade.

I respect any people who stand up to power when it is against their interests. America did it in 1776. The new immigrants are doing it now in the US. But will it happen world wide? I doubt it.

I may sound anti-business, which I am not. However, for a healthy society business needs to take all interests into consideration: the employees, the stockholders and the clients. Without any of them the business can’t survive nor can the society that it lives in.