To hell with the tittle-tattle: give me substance!
So what are the main issues in this campaign? According to CSA, a pollster, unemployment (chômage). Already that suggests to me people are looking in the wrong direction: employment would be a better subject. The only main candidate who seems to look employment directly in the eyes is Jean-Marie Le Pen: for him the secret for getting France back to work is to create wealth so that employers need to employ. The other three remaining candidates (four, including Marie-George Buffet of the Parti Communiste) spend their time pacing round and round the Code du Travail, a massive, indigestible tome that has grown since the 1960’s from a mere 890 pages to 2,632. Like any bible, it is held by some as the cornerstone to civilised life and by others as the wad that is choking France.
Whichever you chose, any discussion about employment or its reverse is actually about the Code du Travail, another of the unread classics of the 20th century. The debate can be summarised: there are basically two types of employment contract, one that is for an indeterminate length of time and the other for a fixed length of time. Naturally, most people want the former: it contains all the benefits of more than a hundred years’ union negotiation and it is difficult and long-winded for an employer to terminate. Cynically, that means once signed, you’ve got forty or so years to sit back and enjoy the view. The fixed-length contract is exactly what it says it is: you know that at a specified date you will be back on the street, looking for another job. Since the summer of 2005, there has been a third type of contract, aimed at small companies, which allows employers to take on people for a maximum of two years. A similar legislation to help under-25 year olds get a first job, was revoked after riots and protests a year ago. Little is said or done for part-time work: in France that is a poor relation, even though it can be an ideal solution for working mothers. It’s almost a taboo subject – certainly in an election campaign.
The communist candidate wants to get rid of the small enterprise contract and reduce the fixed-length contract to 5% of a company’s workforce – so almost every job offered is for life and hard to terminate. The Socialist Party also wants to make the lifetime contract the norm, while lowering employment charges so that companies can afford to employ more people. François Bayrou wants a universal contract, guaranteeing lifetime employment with employee’s rights getting better the longer you have been in the company. Nicolas Sarkozy has also suggested a “contrat unique”, but his would be closer to the fixed-length contract. This caused howls of criticism from everywhere and his spokesman had to step in and spin it: “Of course he didn’t mean a contrat unique…..” What apparently he meant is closer to the Scandinavian model…. But the long and the short of it is that the French overwhelmingly insist on having a lifetime’s security and no candidate is going to offer anything else. In the face of existing competition from China, India and South America this is a bad decision; in the face of expected future competition from those countries it has to be seen as, well, perverse if not suicidal. As a nation, the French seem to have developed a blind-spot about how much the world has changed in 30 years and is still changing at possibly a faster rate. Competition from what used to be dismissed airily as “the third world”, changes in technology which inevitably bring changes in lifestyle: the French know they’re there but they do not want to see them or face them, rather like a country which admits global warming but refuses to do anything about it.
Many people have tried to explain this – the most obvious and understandable reason being that once used to creature comforts one does not want to live without them. I do not want to enter that debate, but simply show that while the candidates are patting themselves on the back for finally addressing the real issues, they are not, in fact. They are addressing quite the wrong thing and lack the courage to talk about what they know must be talked about.
Yesterday Sarkozy went off to London to try to bring back some of the 300,000 French people living and working there. I hope that later in the day some of those present at his meeting will give their reactions on this blog, and I would love to hear particularly from French people in London how they see his call to return. I would guess that the Code du Travail was the root reason why most ex-patriots left France – certainly I know that is the case with my two step-sons. They felt the country of their birth had not enough to offer their talents – talents which have been amply stretched and developed since in London and Toronto. Recently I gave a talk in Montpellier to a rotary club – thus to people of a certain age and income. At the end, many asked me whether I thought French youth was somehow callow, lacking in initiative, courage or even intelligence. They answer is, of course they are not, they are as full of adventure and a love of risk as any other affluent young people. But few can fulfil their desires in France, whereas on the other side of the Channel or the Atlantic they can experience at work that delicious feeling of “It’s down to me to make this happen.” Failure is a dark hole, certainly, waiting – as Hell used to be a couple of hundred years ago. But like Hell in those days, you get used to it’s being there and just get on with life. As long as the society is buoyant, and an individual has the nouse to duck and dive, it can usually be avoided. Which is Le Pen’s point.
February 2nd, 2007 at 12:28 pm
“They felt the country of their birth had not enough to offer their talents”
Please allow me to propose a different view on the very reasons that prevent them to execise their talents in France.
http://silva-rerum.net/?p=302
February 3rd, 2007 at 10:30 am
I so agree! The Code du Travail is the single most important factor in the stagnation of France - I have never voted for the Right, and hate the idea of giving a ticket to rule to all the pompous suits at the UMP party, but it’s crucial that something be done to give young people opportunities here in France. (My children on the brink of leaving the nest, so I feel this very strongly). This will be the hardest thing of all for France to face in the next 10 years. And Ségolène shows no sign at all of wanting to grapple with any hard issues..
February 3rd, 2007 at 2:06 pm
I agree with everything you say, but would like just to point out that there is M. Bayrou. I have yet to meet him, and I hope to soon, but from what I understand he has in the last couple of years developed a genuine anger at the way France is governed. That anger may give him the strength to make those radical changes you describe…..but then, faced with “la rue”, does anyone in this motley crew really have that courage?
February 4th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Mr Bayrou has always shown a strong opposition to RPR or UMP the year before every key elections (presidential or MPs). It’s only fair: if he didn’t, why maintain another party?
But every time he has been in the position, in parliament for example, to actually prevent a law to be voted by the current majority — even though he had clearly expressed his opposition to that law — guess what he did…
He want’s to be the third man. Sarkozy’s or Segolene’s Prime Minister?
His positioning on being a Républicain defying the power of the media controlled by N. Sarkozy’s friends, and many of his propositions — either on the social or economical level — are clearly what many french were expecting from a rebirth of the PS after 2002’s earthquake.
It would be wrong to believe that the “Peuple inattendu” that gathered spontaneously in committees everywhere in France to actually discuss the EU treaty and decided to reject it where mostly communists (or even FN). Though they call themselves antilibéraux, they are far from a revival of trotskysm/communism. The historical far left parties keep trying to lure these voters but they keep failing. If so, they would have joined these parties long ago. They are also strongly critical to PS that seems to be autistic on the reasons why it failed in 2002.
This “fourth column” of grown up and educated citizens is simply tired of the nonsense and ill minded speeches blurbed by ultra-libéraux/communists/conservatives and other ultra-narrow-minded all but human beings concerned parties and politicians. Parties like PC, PS, UMP and UDF have all had a chance to change things in this country and didn’t. A lot of french voters are ready to bet (and work for) a new deal that would put citizens and environment at the heart of society.
The majority of discontented voters in France is roughly split into two main streams (and we’re talking about millions of voters, not just a bunch of cranks):
• The first is those who want to change things the hard way whatever the cost is, with FN. You find in it the “traditional” roots of FN with uneducated and/or racist people driven and managed by a strong network of very educated and traditionalists idealists wanting to set some kind of a national-socialist system.
You also find in this group an important and heavily growing number of traditionally strong RPR/UMP supporters that are disgusted by UMP’s positions and decisions perceived as exclusively in favor of CAC40 and big capitalistic families alike. Small “artisants” and “commerçants”, “professions libérales” (lawyers, medical practices etc.) and most of the farmers have always been on the hard wing of the RPR/UMP, yearning for a complete demolition of the public sector that they describe as a cancer. Now that this is happening, they realize they’ve been betrayed by a poujadist speech. Unable to cope with their very own contradictions (they spit on “fonctionnaires” and “state spendings” all day long but keep asking for collective help and support as soon as a cloud crosses their sky) they tend to say “tous pourris” and say Jean Marie Lepen could clean the place. This last group is as stubborn (sorry for the opinion) and short term sighted than the few hundreds of thousands ultra-left partisans whose ideal is just to crucify “patrons”…
• The second group of discontented voters is all those on the left and center side of the political board who just want their work to be accounted in the balance (and not only capital means as the system tends to go), who want a reborn public sector to protect their collective fundamental needs, and who want long term sighted politics: environment, education, fair economy with the underlying idea of having time to do something else in their life than just work to pay the rent. You find in this group centered républicains, socialists at heart (nothing to do with “sociaux-démocrates”) rejecting PS autism, farmers who reject the PAC (mostly members of the confédération paysane), open minded ecologists, former PC supporters who don’t accept the traditional PC system, and altermondialistes… This “group” (not a group of course) has massively rejected the EU Treaty because it felt it would leave no other way than a deadly ultra competition in Europe. They are very critical regarding the medias in France and reject the neo-communist qualification that these medias tend to put on them. This crowd of unorganized citizen gathered to discuss the EU treaty and a big part of it wanted to renew the experience for 2007 elections; hence the advertising to lure them in of the “démocracie participative” of S. Royal, the “ils ont tout cassé” of JM LePen or even the “j’ai changé” of N. Sarkozy…
Bayrou is also building his position on this second group that could actually make the difference.
However, If Bayrou succeeds I don’t believe a second he’ll change anything, but that’s just a feeling (sorry again).