Edito : The social fracture?

Edito

CPE or not CPE

by Robert ASSADOURIAN

How can we understand the interest aroused by the New Employment Contract andthe students agitation against the First Employment Contract (CPE) which, extended to all companies, is reserved to those under 26 years of age. Besides, the employer or the employee can interrupt it without a motive during the period of 2 years, within the limits of respecting the labour code. However, the Industrial tribunal will still sanction the breaches.

During his TV appearance on Sunday 12th March, the Prime Minister defended the CPE and proposed new guarantees such as a right to training, the biannual evaluation of the contract and the creation of a referent in the company.

It is a wide coalition of political leaders, trade-union leaders, students and high school pupils together with non-concerned nostalgic demonstrators, the protected sectors of the French Railway company, the Paris public transport company, the Post office, the Financial department ... who took part in the demonstration of March 7th, 2006 to denounce the CPE. Instead of the CPE, do the young really prefer more or less paid training courses, fixed-term contracts, various training sessions or assisted jobs that lead nowhere?

Nevertheless this measure represents a progress because it is always difficult to accede immediately to an open-ended contract in one’s first job. The headway is perceptible because within the First Employment contract the salary is the same as for a fixed-term contract, and in the case of a breach of contract, the indemnities are higher. Furthermore, in case of failure, the minimum work period giving right to benefit from unemployment indemnities is 4 months instead of 6.

Nobody wishes to create a precarious situation for the future employees, and the aim of the CPE is to render the labour market more flexible to encourage recruiting young job-seekers. Did Dominique de Villepin fail to communicate correctly ? Have the CPE become a political stake? The political antagonisms are expressed at all levels.

The various protagonists take the risk of further damaging a labour market that cultivates nuances : fixed-term and open-term contracts, the classical temping and part-time contracts together with the contracts for the young (Young Company Contract, Professionalisation, Apprenticeship and Adaptation), the contracts of insertion (CI-RIMA, CIE), the specific contracts (Export, Occasional, Grape harvesting…) and the newcomers: CNE, CPE, CTP and the Senior. In this maze of contracts, which adds pages to the Labour code, Michel Camdessus proposed one sole fixed-term type of contract, in the report he submitted in 2004. We could dream of an Ideal Working Contract (IWC), which could be a fixed-term contract associating a certain recruiting flexibility together with reducing the costs of the dismissal procedure, compensated by higher dismissal indemnities. This utopian IWC still remains to be created…

The true question is that despite the abundance of employment contracts, the unemployment rate in December 2005 was 9,6 % for the whole working population and 22,1 % for the under 25 years old !

The muscular evacuation of the anti-CPE students occupying the Sorbonne generated many comments, but particularly ended in violence, damaging property and the surprising destruction of books ! The strong contestation in Poitiers is present at different degrees in the Province and interests 38 Universities out of 88. It essentially affects the students in Arts, History and Psycho-sociology who do not find any natural outlets, except in education. It is lacking unanimity. Three University presidents, François Resche (Nantes), Rémy Pech (Toulouse II) and Olivier Audeoud (Paris X Nanterre) express their approval of the movement. But considering their presidential position, are they truly aware of the impact of their commitment ?

Moreover, numerous lecture halls are blocked by a small minority of student strikers. The non-striker students are not respected. They are deprived of classes because they cannot enter the lecture halls. The reason for this is that the anti-CPE, led by the UNEF (National students trade union), will not be disadvantaged when it comes to exams.

Those who have the luck to be students forget that, if they will need a job at the end of their studies, the company managers will need competent staff. They will only obtain this by their work, not in the street. These protesting preoccupations waste their time. Today, the heart of the debate must be centred on the 1100 billion euro debt, the relocations, the social problems, unemployment, the brain drain, the future of the young … The semantic quarrel claiming that the CPE generates precariousness is a false debate because other contracts will follow and precariousness will hit head-on certain Frenchmen who are not students.

The true reason of the agitation is perhaps political. Withits eye riveted on presidential elections, the Left, unanimously anti-CPE, expresses its solidarity with the young. The UDF party is considering other solutions to help the young, Nicolas Sarkozy played his role at the Home Office leaving Dominique de Villepin rather alone, but that’s the way it goes. He is striving to avoid the curse of Matignon which threatens all active prime ministers. Will he resist to the pressure ? It is possible, because the CPE is not applicable after 26 years of age, and our students finish their studies more and more late.