PARIS, March 27 (UPI) -- France is bracing for a week of strikes, disruption and likely violence as the political crisis over the labor reforms of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin comes to a head with Tuesday's general strike and mounting calls for the government to resign.
Villepin's offer of compromise Sunday in a meeting with moderate students was boycotted by the main student groups, who demanded that the new First Job Contract be withdrawn.
In a separate meeting in Aix-en-Provence, the militant student groups promised further disruptive actions Thursday if the government does not withdraw the planned law. Ironically, the law may yet be annulled this week by the Constitutional Court which has signaled some doubts about its legality.
Known as the CPE, the new law seeks to make it easier for employers to hire new staff by allowing those under the age of 26 to be fired within two years without cause or appeal. The government's compromise offer includes a promise of retraining for those laid off, and an early review of both the two year probationary period and the no-cause dismissal once the law has been in effect for some months.
But the crisis has now moved far beyond the new law itself, which has become a symbol of broad public dissatisfaction with the government, which is increasingly divided internally as its leaders jostle for the succession to President Jacques Chirac in next year's elections. Concern is intense over the state of the economy and high unemployment, over crime and violence by young immigrants from North Africa, all combined with a sense that France is in danger of becoming ungovernable.
This last factor may be de Villepin's strongest card. The French tradition of opposing a government in the streets rather than in conventional political channels like the National Assembly has weakened governments and given unusual power to the labor unions, even though less than one French employee in five is a union member. But the unions' power is concentrated in the vast public sector, so teachers and railway workers and researchers and government administration are all vulnerable to strike action.
Prime Minister de Villepin has been through this before. In 1995, when de Villepin was the close aide to the newly elected President Chirac, the government of Chirac's close political ally Prime Minister Alain Juppe was trying to withstand a strike by truck drivers that threatened to bring France to a halt. De Villepin advised Chirac to call an election on the theme of "who governs?" and Juppe was defeated and replaced by the opposition socialist.
The current opinion polls, and the sullen public mood, suggest that if Chirac were to dissolve the national assembly and hold new elections, the socialists could well return to power again. So Chirac hesitates and de Villepin's government fumbles for a solution, showing weakness by offering compromise while the opposition scents victory and rejects it.
"Reform in France has two enemies," suggests Claude Imbert, editor of the weekly news magazine Le Point. "The first is the Elysee Palace (the presidential seat of Jacques Chirac) and the second is the street. And the first one is frightened of the second."
"When it comes to the reforms France needs, whatever is not aborted in the planning stage by the president is then massacred by the opposition of the labor unions," Imbert adds.
A united and determined government, with the presidency and the law and an electoral mandate behind it, should be able to overcome the opposition to the very modest reform of the country's labor laws. With a general level of unemployment at 10 percent, youth unemployment at 24 percent and as high as 45 percent for immigrant youth, a government should be able to rally public support for a fundamental reform that would scrap the 35-hour week and the rigidities that make bosses reluctant to hire new staff.
But this government is far from united. President Chirac is a lame duck. Prime Minister de Villepin has never been elected to anything in his life and has little base in the governing party, the UMP (Union for a Presidential Majority), which is less a party than a loose coalition of conservative groups, and is currently dominated by the minister of the interior Nicolas Sarkozy, who sees de Villepin as his rival for the presidency.
And Sarkozy is subtly undermining de Villepin, distancing himself from the labor reform law and suggesting it be suspended. In a closed meeting last week with his supporters in the party, as reported by Le Figaro, de Villepin suggested that the law be suspended for a month while the unions are invited to offer their own proposals to cut youth unemployment, as a way to cool tensions and fend off the rising levels of violence.
"What is de Villepin waiting for? For someone to be killed?" Sarkozy was quoted as saying.
The threat of serious violence is growing after last week's events in Paris, when a peaceful march of students (and in some cases their grandparents) was suddenly joined by gangs of hundreds of young blacks and Arabs who trashed shops and cars, and then began to pillage the students, stealing cell phones, wallets and purses.
After the violence last autumn when young immigrants rioted in towns and cities across France, there is the ominous prospect that the traditional demonstrations and marches of students and union members could be intensified by the immigrants, that the street could be joined by the ghetto in a three-sided battle with the overstretched police.
