Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Goldberg on France
Imagine riot police had to be sent into Harvard to quell an enormous student protest. OK, that's not terribly hard to imagine. But instead of the usual reasons for prosperous students to get all uppity — gay rights, antiwar hoopla, a strong math requirement — imagine that Harvard students rioted over the possibility that they could ever be fired from their first jobs.
Well, that's pretty much what happened over the weekend at the Sorbonne, the creme de la Brie of French education. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, the leader with the most important hair in Europe, pushed through a law which says that employers don't have to give lifetime job security to job applicants under the age of 26.
I was disappointed Goldberg couldn't work in any good surrender jokes, but instead he goes on to note the problems the French system has in creating new jobs in France. After all, if you knew you were stuck with a new employee forever, no matter what, how many of them would you hire? I think everyone goes through periods of feeling unmotivated at work, but wouldn't this happen more often if you knew the worst thing that could happen to you is to maybe get yelled at?
There are definitely some hard working French guys, lifetime employment notwithstanding. But I must also say, having worked for a large French bank for three years in New York, that I was always amazed at how many of the French expats seemed to spend their afternoons standing on the street smoking and sipping espresso.
2 Comments:
By 
Dawnfire82, at
Wed Mar 15, 05:35:00 PM:
Behold the glories of the welfare state.
By TigerHawk, at
Thu Mar 16, 06:21:00 AM:
*Generalization alert* Individual French workers can be excellent. We have more than 150 French employees, and most of them are really good, in the sense that they work diligently and intelligently through the day. The issue really comes down to flexibility. In general, they are exceedingly interested in procedures and policies -- things like job descriptions and such are very important to them and they are protected by law from abrupt changes in their work that they do not agree with. That can be very frustrating to American executives. And, it is absolutly the case that the high cost of terminating a French employee makes us very reluctant to hire them in the first place. In the United States, we will often hire somebody and see if either the job or the person "works out." There is no such luxury in France.
