French Politics

Honestly, part of the problem may also have been Macron buying into his own hype and assuming that the support for his mandate meant a carte blanche for restructuring France.

Or, heck, it might have been that people expected there to be more than talk on his ideas of being 'neither left nor right' and being disappointed when he's basically just a liberal politician from the 90's transported through time to the 21st century, and thus not actually terribly useful for...much of anything, really.

I think what Macron is actually trying to do is to turn France into Germany, economically speaking. Trouble is that while Germany is booming economically, it could actually use a little bit more of France in some (not all) regards.

Or in short, you still need a better option than "I'm not a Fascist" to motivate the public.

Macron was tolerable because his principal opponent was a Fascist whose entire party plank runs on "The Nazis weren't so bad, you guys!", so that ensured his victory. Had Fillon and Hollande not committed political Hara-kiri, Macron would have been nowhere.

To be honest, I still feel like there's a serious lack of more appealing options in France. I don't really like Macron, but if another election were held now... I probably would end up voting for him anyway. What are the other options? The fascist Le Pen, the megalomaniac hypocrite Mélenchon, the Le Pen-lite Fillon and his ilk, and the totally impotent Socialists.

In the 2016 election, among all the candidates, Macron very much seemed like the least bad out of the candidates who had even the remotest shot at winning. Maybe if I were French I'd have voted for Hamon in the first round, but even then I'd not expect him to get anywhere, and I'd have reservations about possibly risking a Le Pen vs. Fillon scenario in the second round, in which case I could not bring myself to vote at all.

Edited by DrDougsh on Dec 11th 2018 at 7:11:54 AM

That is simplifying things. Macron run on more than "I am not a fascist", he run on "I will fix your economy and fight for the EU".

Also, ANY of the other candidates could have made it in the last round over Macron. That they didn't wasn't an accident, it was because they were all worse than him. Every single one of them. They either run on nonsense or they were despicable human beings, or both.

If I had gotten the selection France was offered back then, I would have picked Macron, too.

Except that his way to fix the economy is to screw employees in favor of employers, as seen in the law that bears his name.

Care to elaborate?

Employment laws are rarely black and white, you know.

And softening them can be a good thing in some cases, if they help keeping the economy competetive and thus preventing jobs from being outsourced. And France has some serious problems there.

Slashing job protections to prevent outsourcing is a fantasy. Unless you cut them right to the bone, any jobs that could be outsourced will still be cheaper outsourced.

At most, you might slightly delay it because the cost of restructuring negates some of the benefits now.

To illustrate this on some example: Let's say that you have very strict employment laws, which ensures that every person which gets employed is immediately in a position which makes it extremely hard to fire said person again. Sounds great, doesn't it?

But on the flip side, what happens if a company gets a contract and therefore needs more manpower for the next six months? They can't let their employees constantly work overtime to meet the deadline, they also can't just hire new people under such a law because there is no guarantee that said person will be needed after the contract is over, and since it would cost a lot of money to keep all the extra-people on until they can be legally laid off, it suddenly becomes the safest option to NOT do the contract, because otherwise, you might risk your whole company. So said contract goes to another company...maybe in a different country.

So you need some sort of provision for this, which gives the companies the option to hire extra-people for a limited time. So great, now they will take the contract. but now you run in the risk that they will misuse the provisions to put in place and keep hiring people for a limited time because they are cheaper than keeping a steady workforce.

So you need to change the laws again and put a limit on how long those companies are allowed to hire people under this provision for a specific job.

And so on. Like I said, it is complicated. It would be a little bit easier if there employment rules were identical in every single country (meaning, if there were the same kind of protections everywhere), but that is sadly not the case. Hence Macron is also fighting for having more of those rules on an EU level. Because that will be the only way to prevent a race to the bottom in the long run.

There is one situation where these rules to prevent outsourcing might work, and that's where the companies will keep all their workers in whatever area it is the rules apply to for just long enough that it will make it look like the law change worked and did what it was supposed to. Thus increasing support for corporate-favouring parties and attitudes.

Sounds like what fixed-length contracts are for. Which do have specifications for "temporarily raised activity", including seasons.

Edited by Medinoc on Dec 11th 2018 at 4:56:13 PM

Yes. But if you don't pay attention, you end up with zero hours contracts and with a lot of people working on zero hour contracts alone. Like I said, it is complicated. Not every loosening of regulation is automatically a bad thing, but if you do it, you need to be very, very careful to close eventual loopholes. Otherwise someone WILL misuse it.

Fixed-length contracts have to specify hours.

Quick question: does the French military presence in French Polynesia have any sort of strategic advantage - i.e. naval ports, garrisons, airbases, etc? Or is it just some small outpost that's little more than a colonial-era leftover with no actual force projection abilities?

Yes. Hence me saying "if you don't pay attention".

Like, there are situations in which zero hour contracts make sense. But if a company is constantly covering work they do regularly with zero hour contracts alone, it is misusing the concept.

Fixed length contracts are better because they provide more security for the employee, but same danger there.

You also can (should, really) different rules based on the size of the company in question. But once you have them, you run into the risk of having a lot of companies with exactly 999 employees (just an example) to sidestep certain rules.

Edited by Swanpride on Dec 11th 2018 at 8:23:12 AM

You're the one who wants us to loosen our labour protections. You don't have to convince us it's risky. We're telling you that there are already ways for employers to hire people temporarily (and those have safeguards against abuse, including the possibility of transforming fixed-length contracts into unlimited contracts).

I am trying to explain that it is complicated. Hence me wanting to know what exactly the problem with Macron's law was. What was is supposed to achieve, how did it fail?

Because, again, this is complicated. Because employers aren't just big faceless corporations, the majority of employers are small to medium seized businesses who have a couple of people working for them. And if you want more of them, you need to do something to support those small businesses.

It is not just about preventing jobs from being outsourced, it is also about making further investments attractive. For example my father works in a French-German company (the French company bought the German company) and since the merger and especially after the crisis, his (French-owned) company has invested and created more jobs in Germany than France because the French labour laws are so rigid.

You need to stay competetive if you want to suceed in a globalized world. Especially if you have to compete with companies from countries that have no such restrictions (e.g. China).

And that's why it is important to fight for similar labour protection across Europe. We will still loose some jobs to the US and China, but the further we spread basic protection the better.

Until then, well, I guess Germany needs to take a step in France's direction, and France needs to take a step in Germany's direction.

It's funny how all of these measures to 'stay competitive' also generally result in the poor getting fucked harder and harder with each successive law.

One would think there was some kind of correlation. You have to wonder, really.

Yes. We know. Hence the EU being so important. The more worker protections are introduced EU wide, the better.

Again, this is complicated. I get that you see the perspective of the employee first and foremost, but the perspective of the employer is not something you can just dismiss. Especially not regarding small companies. There are people who have enough work that they can employ at least another person now, but rather work over the weekends than taking the risk.

Yes, but employment laws, like every other regulation, are normally brought in because companies were doing exactly what they were trying to stop.

And small businesses are no more immune to being assholes than large ones.

Yes, but French employment laws were also introduced during a time when most people were working for one company their whole life. That's just not how it works nowadays, and not just because companies changed, employees changed too. They like to climb up the latter and explore new opportunities.

Small businesses are usually more immune, because there the chef has to do the firing personally. If you know the person you are firing, it is way, way harder to do.

Edited by Swanpride on Dec 11th 2018 at 12:52:24 PM

You think the poor will have it better once the Chinese companies dominate the global economy and force European companies out of buisness? Because that will happen if we cling to outdated privileges that might in fact do more harm than good.