Mar 15, 2006

Vive la jodé!

Francia, el sueño erótico de cualquier progre que se precie de tal:

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. Seriously. For the first two years of what the French call the First Employment Contract, employers can fire you if you don't do your work satisfactorily or if they can't afford to keep paying you. Of course, if you make it past those first two years, the smothering mothering of the crapulent French Au Pair State kicks back in and you never again have to worry about getting fired. You would have to be an on-the-job rapist or serial killer to get sacked. Even using the wrong salad fork at the company bistro wouldn't do it.

1 comment:

  1. Me di una buena carcajada con esto: "France passed the law because its economic flexibility makes Dick Cheney look like a yoga master by comparison". Te digo, un día (o un siglo) de estos, las cosas tienen que cambiar en Francia. La insostenibilidad del sistema laboral francés -prácticamente comparable al sistema de la administración pública en España (y ya sabemos lo que opino de eso...)- me hace cuestionar cómo sigue aguantando. Y aguantando. Y aguantando.

    Anyway, la fina ironía del artículo me tuvo sonriendo un buen rato.

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