French economic flexibility makes Dick Cheney look like a yoga master by comparison - by Jonah Goldberg
Imagine riot police in the US had to be sent into Harvard to quell an enormous student protest. OK, that’s not terribly hard to imagine. But instead of the usual reasons for prosperous students to get all uppity — gay rights, anti-war hoopla, a strong math requirement — imagine that Harvard students rioted over the possibility that they could ever be fired from their first jobs. Well, that’s pretty much what happened over the weekend at the Sorbonne, the "creme de la Brie" of French education. French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, the leader with the most important hair in Europe, pushed through a law that says employers don’t have to give lifetime job security to job applicants under the age of 26. Seriously!!
France passed the law because its economic flexibility makes Dick Cheney look like a yoga master by comparison. Until this latest dip of the French baby toe into economic reform, employers had little choice but to offer open-ended employment contracts that amounted to “employment for life.” For the first two years of what the French call the First Employment Contract, employers can fire you if you don’t do your work satisfactorily or if they can’t afford to keep paying you.
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