French Politics

Well, Chinese companies are now forced to raise their standards, too, because the wealthier the population gets the less it is ready to risk their life for a minimum wage.

I'm shaking in my boots. Really, I am.

Oh, so to compete with China we should just cut back all worker protections and tell everyone who's not wealthy they should be grateful for having a job at all.

I didn't know corporate serfdom was getting popular again.

@Sgt Ricko : About New Caledonia, it only gives us a large oceanic territory. We don't have military interest in the region, and very little in term of bases. We stay more because of the "caldoche", the progenies of colons, who makes for more than half the population of the island.

About the Yellow Jackets, I was supportive of the movement in the first two weeks (I'm from Brittany, protesting is our culture) but when I saw that it failed to give a proper ideological direction to the demands, and that they didn't want to form an organization to prevent looting and violence, I distanced myself from it. Their lack of clear goals and political banner works in their favors, but also against them. It prevent them from crumbling from the inside with dissentions, but it also stop them from really... you know... going anywhere either. Hating Macron is not a programm.

In other news, some bastard just committed a shooting in Strasbourg. At least four dead. The tensions will rise. And the conspiracy theorists are already partying.

Until now I didn't realise Strasbourg was in France. Though in my defence it's literally on the border.

Edited by RainehDaze on Dec 11th 2018 at 12:20:32 PM

x3

Why we are insisting on impoverishing ourselves and giving free rein to capital solely in order to "stay competitive" against a country which provides (or used to, anyway, things might have changed) extensive state support to industry and huge domestic fiscal policy shielded by protectionist forex measures I don't know.

There is obviously an optimal point in terms of domestic labour protection vs. ease of buisness, but IMO this should never be considered in terms of "competitiveness" unless one has no other choice (i.e. is a Eurozone member or weak economy with significant foreign-currency debt). The lightfootedness of global capital has been conferred by state action first and foremost, the ability to tax dodge and offshore if your host state is "noncompetitive" is not a gift of God. We allowed it, we can undo it.

You could just decide not to "compete" on a selection of skewed playing fields with your legs tied together. Introduce capital controls and perhaps import-export controls as well, run whatever damn deficit you require to support domestic demand, restrict private debt growth (especially in foreign currencies) and insist that if capital wants to sell to your lucrative markets they have to play by your rules. Bit drastic, but I for one would prefer it over having Europe meet Chinese employment standards halfway so we can retain sufficient zero-hours service jobs to stay functional. If capital attempts to play silly buggers they can and should be slapped down, not appeased because the nation that carries out the most human sacrifice gets a few branch offices and artificially expanded GDP to crow over.

Of course this would necessitate removing two or three of the Four Freedoms, disbanding the Euro or forming a dominant Eurozone Treasury and then annoying the WTO extensively, so it will never happen. We got one desperate shot at the preconditions with Brexit, but nobody was around to aim the gun.

Edited by DeathorCake on Dec 11th 2018 at 12:45:31 PM

4x Nobody says we need to cut all labour laws, or even most of them. But you'd have to be blind to think that we can cling without compromise to laws that were passed under completely different circumstances.

Or we do something that is a) realistically possible and b) does not ruin the economy.

It's a slippery slope and each step gives deregulators a bigger foot in the door. So, no.

Being dogmatic has never helped anyone. Not every change is automatically bad.

"We need to make it easier for people to lose their jobs so it's competitive" is not a good start.

Being dogmatic about competitiveness doesn't help either.

Nice polemic, but in reality, you ALWAYS need to balance the need of the business and the need of the worker.

It doesn't, which is why I am currently arguing with Zarastro and everyone else at the same time.

Still haven't gotten an answer to my question regarding the law named after Macron.

Edited by Swanpride on Dec 12th 2018 at 3:00:32 AM

x5

But making it more attractive for companies to hire people when they need them is.

I think if anyone deserves the term "dogmatic" it is someone who opposes any reform on pure principle.

Nor would I describe myself as being dogmatic regarding labour reforms. If anything I am dogmatic regarding competivness, because that is what matters in the end. You can also improve competivness through other means.

Edited by Zarastro on Dec 12th 2018 at 12:52:35 PM

I looked Macron's law on growth, activity and equality of chance in the economy up, and became acutely aware of how unfit I am to answer your question considering how little I understand about the fine subtlety of economic law.

What I can say, is that it involved a relaxation of the regulations regarding work on Sunday and in the evening (exceptions already existed), an authorization for bus companies to concurrence trains, liberalization of regulated professions (lawyer, bailiff, clerk, etc.), simplifying the exam for the driving license, several things about real estate, tax, shareholding and the prud'hommes that I don't understand, and the selling of state's assets.

As for how it failed... Well, it seems that the growth, activity and equality of chance in the economy didn't really happened. The Sunday & evening opening didn't create more benefice, the bus companies are barely profitable and only employ something like 1500 persons, the liberalization of regulated professions only had a marginal effect, etc.

No. No you do not.

The need of the worker always outweighs the need of the business. Indeed the need of the business should only ever matter at all insofar as providing for that need is a requirement for providing for the need of the worker.

This is because businesses are abstract concepts that can be structured in multiple ways, each with their own needs, while the needs of the workers, the workers being pretty much 99% of the populations, are the needs of human beings.

& We oppose relaxing workers' protection because, instead of resulting in more people being employed, it results in increased corporate profits. This has been proved many times. As for balancing corporate and employee interests, corporate profits have been increasing faster than wages for decades, so maintaining a balance would require strengthening workers' right instead of weakening them.

Edited by Khudzlin on Dec 12th 2018 at 2:18:10 PM

Thanks...yeah, opening business on Sundays isn't really all that useful if you ask me. Some of this might make sense (ie the licenses, though that depends on what was requested beforehand, frankly a lot of this sounds like an attempt to plug a worker shortage with slightly less qualified people, so the question there is if said people would still be qualified enough to do the job in question), but a greater context would be useful. As well as a proper study about the effectiveness of the law.

The success of the company and the well-being of the workers are connected. One example: During the finance crisis a LOT of German workers agreed to "kurzarbeit" (working shorter hours which naturally results in lower wages), a lot of the smaller company scratched all additional benefits (ie Christmas bonuses) for a few years. That was done because the companies didn't have enough work anymore for all the workers, but by everyone agreeing to such measures, nobody would lost their job and the company survived the crisis - and once the economy picked up again, most companies rolled back those measures and were able to go back to being competitive again because they still had the workers they needed. Some companies, weren't exactly fast in reinstating the former status quo, though. So, do you think that such measure should be forbidden by law to ensure that no worker gives up any kind of benefit, or was it better to allow an arrangement like this, even if there are some black sheep between the companies which took those measures? Does it make sense to PREVENT companies which are honest players to do whatever necessary to stay on the market and keep their employees?

There have also been examples for the opposite. I just mentioned one of them. Hence the need to examine every worker-related law carefully.

Edited by Swanpride on Dec 12th 2018 at 5:42:01 AM

Employment law does not exist to help companies. Employment law should absolutely not be slackened entirely for the benefit of companies.

The relationship between employees and corporations of any size is an inherently unequal one. One party has all the negotiating cards, and the only way to balance that out is via unions (aka companies suddenly find that one employee can become many employees and they are in trouble) and actual employment law to stop abuses.

And the funny thing about loosening employment regulations is that it's something promulgated by the economic right. Take your example: if we have a situation where workers cannot work less than X hours by law, what would be the way to address that? Well, the more extreme example would be the most likely one to come up: just cut it entirely. Or maybe say all contracts must include a minimum number of hours worked, fail to exclude 0, and cite zero hours contracts for their "flexibility". Whereas all you want is some mechanism for workers already employed to voluntarily work fewer hours—but still be able to claim full hours at some later date.

And without fail, if you've got someone going on about "competitiveness", they are not going to approach this with a concern for the workforce in mind, because they're only thinking about business and profits. And those are almost entirely the people who push these things.

There is no value in saying "well, you need to think carefully about the laws" because of course you do. You need to think carefully about any law. What you need is for the law to be written and approached with the right mindset, which isn't "BUSINESS"—as business laws are meant to constrain the actions of businesses, not help them.

Yes. But you have also be careful to not constrain them so much that the business won't be there anymore within a few months. That's why there are different rules for different seized businesses, and why you sometimes need to adjust the rules a little bit. If you don't do that, your market will soon be completely dominated by the big international corporations, and THAT will put your common worker in a way worse negotiation position than beforehand. You need to encourage the small and medium seized companies, because otherwise, the power of the multinationals will grow so much that even a government will have a hard time to curtail them.

Thing is, 'small and medium companies' don't need to be convinced to hire local people over outsourcing and whatnot, because by their very definition non-multinational companies are local and hiring locally is literally their only option.

A retail store in Bordeaux isn't going to compete with a retail store in Berlin at all, neither for employees nor customers, no matter how 'competitive' Germany makes its labour and business laws. Hell, it's not even going to compete with a retail store in Toulouse.

Medium-seized companies are working cross-border. And yes, small companies are forced to work and hire locally, but you also need to create a situation in which those small companies are able to survive and compete with the multinationals. Otherwise you won't HAVE those small companies.

And the multinationals, well, you can only get to them on an EU level, hence Macron's push for legislative on the EU level for workers rights is a good one. As are the attempts of the EU to reign in Amazon, Facebook and co.

Plenty of small companies are able to compete with multinationals just fine, because they don't operate in the same spheres.

Your local plumber, dentist, car repair shop, etc... They all don't compete with multinationals at all. They all hire locally, if they hire at all, and loosening labour laws doesn't really help them one bit.

The notion of the 'small business being outcompeted by the multinational' comes from exactly two things:

Small restaurants (fast food or otherwise) who have to compete with larger chain restaurant companies like McDonalds.

Small retailers who have to compete with large chain retailers.

In the former's case, this used to be an issue but has since pretty much stabilised. While the large chains like McDonalds are convenient and cheap, they're not exactly high quality or diverse and as such smaller restaurants and eateries survive because they cater to different needs.

And in the latter's case... Well... Most retailers are pretty much fucked with the current rise of online shopping any way.

Edited by Robrecht on Dec 13th 2018 at 10:38:53 AM

Not exactly true. If you don't pay attention, those jobs are taken over by one company which then builds a monopoly, too. Gas stations are an example for this, those used to be "local businesses", nowadays the small independent gas station has become the exception. Building maintenance is nowadays done by growing companies, which cover one to two countries. They often work with local businesses, but the "local plumber" has to work with them to get the work he previously could get directly.

Or Taxi drivers. Uber failed in Germany, due to strict regulations, but it set up shop pretty much everywhere else.

Also, you WANT smaller companies compete with the big ones on the SAME market if you don't want the big ones write ALL the rules for said market.

Edited by Swanpride on Dec 13th 2018 at 1:53:32 AM

Good news : the aforementioned bastard who killed four people in Strasbourg fifty hours ago has been "neutralised" by the local SWAT teams after they succeeded in cornering him (karma ...) alone in a hangar that used to be a slaughterhouse but we don't know whether he had help from other organisations and/or individuals so far.

Good job boys ! That is at least one we won't have to feed in jail for decades !

Edited by Nuup-Kangerlua on Dec 13th 2018 at 10:51:39 AM

Not sure if that is good news. He certainly knew some stuff which could have been useful.