First Employment Contract
Article 8 of the 31 March 2006 Equality of Opportunity Act, establishing the CPE, was repealed by a 21 April 2006 law on the Access of Youth to Professional Life in Firms.
This law was proposed by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin allegedly to tackle a 23% unemployment rate among the young,[1] and also as a response to the civil unrest in October 2005.
The reasoning of the government for introducing CPE was that unemployment was one of the major causes of lawlessness in poorer neighbourhoods, that workforce laws putting the burden of proof for valid reasons for dismissal on the employer discouraged hiring, especially of people with "risky" profiles, and thus that making dismissal easier would improve the employment prospects of such youngsters.
The student movement as well as all trade unions (including the CGT) and the Socialist Party asked not only for the suppression of the CPE but also of the CNE, a similar contract passed in November 2005 by the same government.
On 10 April, as the protests were still getting bigger, the government completely withdrew the law, and substituted for it fiscal incentives to firms employing young people.
The CPE sparked debates among the political classes, and drew massive protests from students in the streets of France, along with sudden strikes.
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 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.
[4] The CPE was officially designed to encourage employers to hire more employees under 26 by offering tax cuts and flexibility to employers,[5] 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.
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.
), many students (for example the students' union UNEF), all the left-wing political parties, and – to a lesser extent – some centrist opponents, such as the moderately conservative Union for French Democracy (UDF), saying that the CPE would make it easier for employers to exert pressure on employees (lowering wages, sexual harassment, etc.)
Some opponents dubbed it the "Kleenex contract", implying that the CPE would allow employers to discard young people like facial tissue.
The law has met heavy resistance from students, trade unions, and left-wing activists, sparking protests in February and March 2006 (and continuing into April) with hundreds of thousands of participants in over 180 cities and towns across France.
The actions were (unusually) supported by all of the main trade union federations and all the Left political parties (more or less enthusiastically).
The Socialist deputies and senators who had deposed the legal recourse before the Constitutional Council notably claimed that the law was superseded by article 24 of the European social charter, which states that the employer must give a juridical motive before firing an employee, and against the International Labour Convention (n°158).
Chirac's paradoxical call (officially promulgating the law while unofficially asking at the same time for its suspension) has only baffled both partisans and opponents of the text.
The president's move was widely analyzed by the press as support for his prime minister Dominique de Villepin against his 2007 election rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, who was the leader of Chirac's political party, the UMP.
