The contrat première embauche (CPE), translated first employment contract, was a new form of employment contract pushed in spring 2006 in France by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. This employment contract, available solely to employees under 26, would have made it easier for the employer to fire employees by removing the need to provide reasons for dismissal for an initial "trial period" of two years, in exchange for some financial guarantees for employees. However, the enactment of this amendment to the so-called "Equality of Opportunity Act" (loi sur l'égalité des chances) establishing this contract was so unpopular that soon massive protests were held, mostly by young students, and the government had to rescind the amendment. Actually, President Jacques Chirac declared that the law would be put on the statute book, but that it would not be applied (in some constitutional stunt). Article 8 of the March 31, 2006 Equality of Opportunity Act, establishing the CPE, was repealed by an April 21, 2006 law on the Access of Youth to Professional Life in Firms. The rest of the Equality of Opportunity Act, which dispositions were also contested by the students' protests, was maintained.
Legislative process
The CPE sparked debates among the political classes, and drew massive protests from students in the streets of France, along with sudden strikes. Criticism was levied at both the substance of the CPE and the way it was enacted.
Instead of putting the clauses creating CPE inside the bill it was proposing to Parliament, the government chose to submit it as an amendment of its own text. This bypasses some compulsory legal review by the Conseil d'État and reduces the time available for examination by members of the Parliament. Earlier in 2006, president of the Assembly Jean-Louis Debré, though a fellow member of UMP and an ally of Villepin, complained about the Villepin government submitting lengthy amendments of its own bills and said that it showed these bills were badly prepared.[3] Furthermore, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin forced approval of the law by the Assembly on its first reading by invoking article 49-3 of the Constitution: under 49-3, a bill is considered approved in its present state by the Assembly unless the Assembly chooses to dismiss the Prime Minister. Such a move hardly ever occurs, since both the Assembly and the Prime Minister are from the same majority. Use of 49-3 is seen as an infringement on the legislative prerogatives of Parliament and is thus reserved for exceptional cases. As many have pointed out, especially when the Prime Minister announced the use of 49-3, Dominique de Villepin has never run for elected office.
Although the CPE is the primary target of the student movement against the law, other measures of the "Statute on the Equality of Opportunities" have also been contested. Among them, allowing apprenticeships from as young as 14 years old (allowing a youth to leave the standard public education system), night work from the age of 15 (instead of 16 now) and suspension of certain type of welfare measures (families with more than three children have the right to some governmental financial support in France) when students skip school. This last measure has been for a long time in the program of the far-right movement Front National, thus also explaining part of the popular protests. The most controversial part of this new law lies in the way it brings flexibility to employers: this contract allows French employers to fire workers under the age of 26 without juridical motive during the first two years of the contract, among other things.
If the employee seeks juridical recourse against arbitrary firing, the burden of proof would be reversed. In an indefinite contract, the burden of proof was reversed during the probationary period, which lasted from just a few days to three months, depending on the type of job, requiring an employee seeking legal recourse to prove they were unjustly fired rather than the employer to prove just cause for the dismissal.
Controversy
The CPE was officially designed to encourage employers to hire more employees under 26 by offering tax cuts and flexibility to employers [4], and was expected to offer young people access the job market that they have been desperately missing previously (One in four young people in France is unemployed, but the figure rises to 50% in the poor suburbs [5]). Unlike in more liberal employment environments, such as those of the US or the UK, firing an employee under long-term contract is made hard for French employers once the probation period (maximum 3 months) elapses. "Firing people is difficult and costly, this has made firms over the years more and more reluctant to take people on" [6] The purported aim of the CPE law was to break this reluctancy.
Supporters of the CPE believe it will reduce the high unemployment, particularly among poor youths. Employers, they contend, will be more willing to take chances with young employees if they are not constrained by France's job security laws. They claim that unemployment is partially caused by the restrictive labor laws which they believe have also helped keep economic growth at a low level by discouraging business foundation and expansion. [7] Softening the "rigid employment code" has been the motto of MEDEF and employers in general for years, and is claimed by French liberals (those supporting free-market policies) to be a key way to help both economic growth and employment to come back.
Supporters of the CPE and opponents of the blockading of the universities called demonstrations in the streets in March and April. These demonstrations of support from the government only mustered hundreds, while the anti-government protests got millions.
Supporters
Critics of the law include all trade unions (evincing a rarely-found unanimity between the various politically oriented unions - CGT, CFDT, FO, CFTC, CGC-CGE...), many students (UNEF,...), all the left-wing political parties, and — to a lesser extent — some right-wing opponents, such as the moderately conservative Union for French Democracy (UDF), saying that the CPE will make it easier for employers to exert pressure on employees (lowering wages, sexual harassment, etc.) since they may dismiss their younger employees at any time, without any judicially contestable reason. Some opponents have dubbed it the "Kleenex contract", implying that the CPE allows employers to discard young people like facial tissue. According to them, the law will only encourage the working poor and precarity phenomena, and violates a requirement of French labor law introduced in 1973, as well as article 24 of the European social charter, which states that the employer must provide a motive for dismissal of employees.
Sixty socialist deputies and sixty socialist senators have appealed against the law to the Constitutional Council; see below.
Critics
Lefthit
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