French Riots + Labor law

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/03/28/france-strike060328.html


should companies have no right to fire an employee?

Is absolute job security now an inalienable right?

To me this seems like socialism gone awry. Why do people think they are entitled to absolute job security? Do companies have no rights?

 

How is this law supposed to help workers, particularly young workers? Companies will simply hire an endless string of competent workers for up to 2 years then fire them and restart the process again... no one is going to be able to hold onto their job for more than two years. And overtime, a lot of jobs held by over-26s are going to be given to under-26s because it's going to be a lot cheaper to staff them so. Insanity.

The idea of the French deregulating their labor market is in general a very good one. They badly need it.

This being said, I am not sure how this law is really going to help towards that. This sort of partial deregulation seems likely to further distort the labor market, rather than normalize it.

 

Actually, there needs to be some sort of balance.

I'm currently struggling through the beauracratic process of trying to attain welfare because trying to find a permanent postion in a compay that looks after its workers has proven incredibly difficult for me for about 4 years.

As a result of not wanting to be on the trash heap of the lower societal rung, i am returning to university to finish my degree. But apparently graduate jobs are not much different in Australia.

But what can we do if we want to compete with dishevelled third world countries like india and china where workers have NO rights. Fuck megara, could you honestly say from my position that globalisation is a positive thing?

 

Well there is like 25% unemployment for young workers in france...something needs to be done!

This legislation would allow companies to take a risk on younger workers without being locked into them. If they are worth keeping...companies can keep them. If they suck, they arent stuck with them for 40 years.


So you think this will just switch the unemployment from young people to old people?

 

it is virtually impossible for western companies to compete with companies that exploit india/china. Their labor is just too cheap. Aside from putting up high tariffs against non western nations...there is a serious problem.

 

Companies should obey the laws within any given country, if the French people believe companies shouldn't fire someone unless for a good reason then it is their right.


Workers > companies

 

then france will have no one to blame but themselves when even more of their jobs ship out overseas.

 

Workers, worldwide need to unite then companies will have no where to move because standards will be the same worldwide.

 

do you not think that companies have rights? What about the right of the owner of a business....is his personal freedom not being trampled on by these kind of laws?

 

Because there will be no companies left anywhere in the western world.

 

What do you mean?

 

If you were a business owner, would you follow asinine laws or go to another country? If it was left fully up to the workers, we would all work 4 hour days, 4 days a week for $25 an hour and could never get fired.

Like Aerosmith said, dream on.

 

What personal freedoms and rights are trampled?
Companies aren't people.

 

Sure I will follow the laws, because I need the workers and if the laws are similar worldwide, then moving becomes pointless.

My business is nothing without workers to produce.

 

Companies have a vast supply of workers in countries where $9 an hour would be a great pay, and they'll still have people back in the home country buying their products, they have no need to worry.

 

It is typical of people to first blame the workforce for the ailments of companies as a whole when quite honestly it is not warranted when people look at the whole picture. When you zoom out on companies like GM, Chrysler, and Ford, you'll find that there are a large variety of reasons for their current position on the market as mediocre financial performers.

The biggest reason why these three companies have been running into so much trouble is competition. Asian automakers invaded the North American market with cars which were creating whole new markets for consumption and these markets have continued to grow and mature while the big three (Ford, GM, and Chrysler) have more or less completely failed to enter the newly created markets. Today we are at a point where the big three automakers are just now turning the corner on building vehicles which can compete with the Asian designs, but it will be a long time before we see that market even out with competition between the North Americans and the Asians.

To state this more simply, the North American auto makers have been asleep at the wheel in terms of producing cars which people will buy. Bill Ford acknowledged this when he made his continent wide speech to the workers of his company who would lose their jobs as a result of what he called "a failure on our part to make cars which people want to buy."

To address the issue of GM's "lavish benefits" specifically, the reason why GM has had so much problems with their benefits package is not because they offered too much to their workers. Ford and Chrysler both have very similar benefits packages for their workforce and their programs are not nearly as poorly mismanaged as the GM program is. The reason for this is actually because GM refused to fix the way that their benefits packages were administered. When most large unionized organizations start up sweeping "lavish benefits" programs for their workers, they almost always opt for a third party to handle them. For reasons which I am not fully in understanding of, GM opted to handle those programs in house and created it's own financial management program for their workers from the ground up, and this fact alone costed them billions and continues to cost them as much while they are not getting the same return on investment as the other two North American auto makers are getting on their benefits program.

Now, to go into the costs of "lavish benefits" and how they are supposedly choking companies like GM. Well, as far as this goes, the costs of health care and drugs in the US is borderlining on horrendus. This in and of itself accounts for a large chunk of the problem of the benefits package which the workers of the big three currently enjoy. Most countries have managed to curb this problem fairly effectively by enacting laws which control the costs and administration of health care related issues.

Now on to the point which was brought up in the article...

As far as employee retirement rates go, this is a problem which is currently facing the big three, but the effects of it are perhaps overpronounced in comparison to many of the other issues I brought up before. As it stands right now we are teetering on the edge of a mass retirement and subsequent rehiring of masses of new people in all sectors of the economy due to the baby boomer cohort. What remains a problem however was the inability of the workforces to effectively manage their financial situations so as to retire on the 30 and out idea. Some states and provinces have handled this with a mandatory retirement at 65 (or whatever age is fashionable), but I know that here in Ontario this has been coming under attack to the dismay of many activists groups of all stripes.

What is interesting to note about this problem is that unions are very proactive in attempting to redress this situation.

What I find to be kind of ironic in this situation is that even after we force the older workers out of the work force, we don't necessarily see their jobs replaced by new people. Nowadays, many workers who go into retirement do not even see anyone new come in to take their place. Although we are still far away from the day when our workforces are almost exclusively robots, we should not be of the illusion that it will not eventually one day happen. When this day comes, the amount of people in the workforce as a whole will be far less than it was in the heyday of the auto industry and the only people who will work in the manufacturing industry will be engineers and skilled trades.

 

people own companies!

economic freedom is extremely important.

 

For a few.

 

A worldwide union is a necessity for workers.
yes, companies have the upper hand to move around unlike workers.

 

for everyone. That is why America was created.

Virtually everything relies on economics