CHIRAC: 'OUI SURRENDER!'
NEW YORK Post
Editorial
April 12, 2006
True to Gallic tradition, President Jacques Chirac on Monday stared sternly at the rioters who've spent the last two weeks ravaging France and . . . surrendered.
Bowing to pressure from rowdy adolescents and moss-backed unions violently opposed to proposed labor-law reform, Chirac provided la Belle France with a regrettable lesson:
Riots pay.
As Chirac's heir apparent, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, has rightly noted, the reform - which would simply allow employers to lay off employees in their first two years - is in the interests of France's young people.
Their future prosperity depends on a vibrant French economy - and that, in turn, depends on sane national labor policies.
As commerce and industry globalize, France's economic climate grows worse every year it refuses to realistically reassess the nation's social-welfare policies.
Villepin's "First Jobs Contract" was a very small step to address these economic concerns, which have already taken a heavy toll.
Unemployment among workers under the age of 26 stands at a staggering 25 percent - far and away the highest in Europe. And the rate is twice that in the housing projects that erupted in angry mob violence last fall.
With strict regulations limiting the length of work weeks, a government that consumes almost 50 percent of national GDP and an uncountable number of other economy-killing workplace regulations, it's small wonder that France is chronically unable to grow its economy and create jobs.
In withdrawing the central provision of the First Jobs Contract that would have allowed businesses to become more competitive, Chirac gains peace in the streets at the expense of the nation's economic future.
But as a leader, he has failed a more deserving constituency: non-university-educated young adults who have no jobs to riot over, nor the prospect of any.
Quel dommage.
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