A nationwide strike in France has disrupted train service and closed schools, as unions joined French students in protesting a law that would allow employers to fire young workers within two years without reason. More than two thirds of French citizens oppose the law, and the protests are forcing the government to confront its own two-tier system, one that creates an elaborate system of benefits for society's "haves" and one that imposes more restrictions and unemployment for a growing group of "have-nots." Like many developed nations, including the U.S. and the UK, France has achieved economic success with foreign investment and policies that promote open trade. Yet, the gains seem concentrated in a few pockets. For increasing numbers of middle-class workers, let alone low-income, immigrant or uneducated sectors, globalization has come to represent insecurity and declining social justice. Many fear that the phenomenon has not so much eliminated poverty in developing countries as much as eroded standards in developed nations. Patrick Sabatier, an editor based in Paris, suggests that politicians worldwide will have trouble simultaneously pursuing policies of globalization for some and posturing with protectionist talk for others.

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PARIS: Students occupying the Sorbonne, riot police battling demonstrators, cars burning on the chic tree-lined boulevard near the Eiffel Tower. Are these the images of an anti-globalization riot? Is this hide-bound France resisting the onset of global norms of a flexible labor market and free trade, as many foreign commentators insist? A look behind the headlines shows that the discontent goes much deeper than mere revolt against a law that allows for easy firing of young employees. The French government, which has engaged in stealth globalization while espousing populist anti-globalization rhetoric, has been caught in its own trap. By creating two Frances - one of insiders who enjoy the fruits of globalization and state protection and another of have-nots - the government of President Jacques Chirac has set the stage for the explosive protests.

Sure, the demonstrations began against the proposed law allowing easy hiring and firing for workers under the age of 26, during their first two years of employment, without reason. Foreign analysts quickly concluded that the roots of this resistance rest in a French refusal to adapt to the iron rules of globalization by abandoning an overgenerous social safety net and adopting labor rules similar to those prevalent in the U.S., the UK and other liberal countries.

A nationwide strike in France has disrupted train service and closed schools, as unions joined French students in protesting a law that would allow employers to fire young workers within two years without reason.

This analysis overlooks the fact that the failures of the French political system drive these demonstrations as much as this particular legislation. The labor law has been a mere spark setting fire to a combustible political landscape. The present explosion resulted from the collision between a weak economy with endemically high unemployment and the terminal illness of a paternalist Gaullist regime built in the nationalist 1960s, whose standard-bearers are President Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.

In recent years, France increasingly acts as a citadel besieged by the evil forces of globalization. The word itself has become a synonym for loss of jobs, lower wages, and harsher working conditions, all attributed to unfair competition from countries in the developing world, where unionization, social laws, and even basic democratic rights are unknown or systematically ignored, and where wages are abysmally low. These fears fueled French voters' resounding rejection of the EU Constitution. The EU has become, for many of the French, a Trojan horse for increased and unfair job competition from the new Eastern European members of the union, epitomized by the specter of the "Polish plumber," supposedly allowed to steal work from French craftsmen because of the lower wages and minimal social rules in his native country, added to a loss of social protections because of Brussels-mandated deregulations and privatizations.

A look behind the headlines shows that the discontent goes much deeper than mere revolt against a law that allows for easy firing of young employees.

Those fears of globalization have paradoxically been fueled not only by the Left, whose ideology traditionally emphasizes social rights, public services and the regulating role of the national state, but also by the supposedly pro-business Right. Chirac has opposed WTO and European reforms in the defense of endangered French farmers; de Villepin has positioned himself as the main exponent of "economic patriotism." But exaggerated fears of globalization, the playing up to protectionist reflexes for domestic political gains, are not just a French story, as shown by recent uproars in the U.S. over the proposed Chinese buyout of an oil company or Dubai control of operations at six ports. In France, anti-globalization tendencies have been fueled by a social crisis grown out of the very success of the French economy's opening to the world. Besides the UK, France has attracted the most foreign investment in Europe. One out of four private-sector employees works for exporting firms, and one out of seven works for a foreign company. Over a third of the valuation at the Paris Bourse is made up of foreign capital. And globalization has been good to big French companies, which announced record profits this month, a 28 percent increase over the previous year, thanks to strong world demand, with shareholder dividends increasing by 30 percent.

All this fuels suspicions among the French that not everyone has a piece of the globalization pie. It also supports the criticism, even voiced by some business leaders, that companies have been guilty of neglecting medium- and long-term investments, in R&D and job creation, to satisfy the gluttony of financial markets and shareholders. At the same time the gap has increased between two tiers of the population: The "haves" are made up of the moneyed classes, shareholders, property owners but also workers holding permanent jobs with big companies or the public sector, who enjoy all the benefits of the safety net and the liberalizing policies of the present government. The "have nots" are the growing mass of the unemployed (over 10 percent of the workforce), those who can't find anything other than precarious, short-term, low-skilled and low-paid jobs, termed MacJobs, even when they belong to the middle class.

Foreign analysts quickly concluded that the roots of this resistance rest in a French refusal to adapt to the iron rules of globalization by abandoning an overgenerous social safety net...

The ranks of the have-nots are growing. More are college-educated degree-holders. The student demonstrators of spring 2006 fear being condemned to the have-not category, alongside those suburban unschooled who rioted last November, 40 percent of whom are unemployed, a protest that was as much a social explosion as a problem of integrating immigrants or ethnic or religious tensions. The protesters direct outrage not against globalization as such, but at perceived injustices in the redistribution of its benefits, at the targeting of young people for special labor legislation. A deep distrust of the political system has emerged from the incoherent policies of the successive conservative governments of Chirac, following the failures of the socialist Left to enact reforms. More often than not, the students say, politicians ignore their campaign promises.

This double-talk has been particularly obvious on the question of globalization. Government leaders promised to uphold the "French social model" against the pressures of globalization, while at the same time implementing actual policies that introduced liberal reforms by stealth. For example, the government has opened energy and transportation sectors to competition, allowing foreign groups to operate within France, while employees - truck drivers for instance - work under different labor laws. The government attracts foreign investments by granting special tax status to expatriates and multinationals.

The labor law has been a mere spark setting fire to a combustible political landscape.

Opposition to the latest French proposal about youth employment has less to do with a French hostility to globalization than with an acute domestic political crisis - made more virulent by the refusal of the government to engage, prior to the crisis, in any social dialogue on the reforms proposed in the labor market and educational system. The only similarities between the near-mythical student uprising of May 1968 and the present movement are that both mark the coming-of-age of an entire generation, through street confrontation with a conservative government. But in 1968, France was confident of its economic standing and post-war social model. Its youth fought the weight of a parochial society and traditional culture in order to modernize and globalize it. Today, French culture is thoroughly modern and globalized. Its youth, beyond reacting to the anxiety born of an economic slump, essentially protest failed policies.

Most understand that the French social model must be reformed in the age of globalization, but they want it accomplished without forfeiting the legacy of democratic ideals of equity and social justice. That may be as idealistic as their parents' cause, but could be just as useful in the long run in a country that - as argued by Jacques Marseille, a history professor at the Sorbonne - seems to know no other way to modernize than street confrontations.




Contributed by Patrick Sabatier, deputy editor of the Paris daily, "Liberation". Reprinted with permission from YaleGlobal Online. Rights: 2006 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization

To read another Global Envision article about globalization and anxiety, see Anxious America - Part I.



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