PARIS — As protests raged in the capital and across the country, France's Socialist government survived a no-confidence vote Thursday after it forced a controversial labor law through Parliament in a last-ditch attempt to curb unemployment before next year's presidential election.
The legislation — which significantly loosens the country’s stringent labor regulations — was adopted Tuesday without a vote in Parliament, scandalizing deputies and provoking a “motion of censure,” which would have stopped the law.
The new law speaks to issues far broader than French politics. It is an attempt to combat unemployment — an issue all over Europe that is especially acutein France, where the rate has stubbornly lingered over 10 percent for some time now, just below its high in the mid-1990s.
Since the end of March, hundreds of thousands of predominantly young protesters have swarmed public squares and city streets across France in demonstrations that recall the student revolts of 1968.
On Thursday, thousands of young people gathered outside the National Assembly in Paris. They were protesting the government’s move to loosen France’s famous worker protections, among the strongest in the world, which limit the workweek to 35 hours and prohibit firms from firing employees even for economic reasons.
Many view this week’s changes as a leftist government’s abandonment of leftist ideals.
“It’s a leftist government that was elected,” said a high school student who identified himself only as Mathurin, “but they’re sort of traitors, as far to the right as they’ve moved.”
Manuel Valls, France’s prime minister, said in Parliament on Tuesday, “This reform has to go through, the country must move forward.”
Some French economists point out that the young and unemployed are protesting a set of measures that were largely introduced to help the young and unemployed.
“I’m not sure that French people really understand what’s in this law,” said Stéphane Carcillo, a professor at Sciences Po, a Paris-based research institution.
“The unemployment rate in France is high for structural reasons, not just because of the crisis,” he said, citing a traditionally corporatist society that continued to maintain a generous social security system even after postwar growth began to stagnate.
“It’s definitely a law that should have been passed a few years ago,” Carcillo said.
