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tyresiashttp://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/03/17/france-protest060317.html
French authorities arrested 272 people overnight after an estimated 250,000 students spilled onto streets across the country to protest a new youth employment law, setting cars on fire and injuring 51 police and riot officers. French President Jacques Chirac, concerned that protests planned for Saturday could also turn violent, called for talks Friday between the government and union leaders organizing the demonstrations.
The protesters were upset with a new law that gives companies the power to fire workers under the age of 26 without cause during the first two years of their employment. Waving banners and wearing garbage bags to suggest that the new law would make them disposable, university and high school students marched through French towns and cities in about 200 separate protests. The worst violence came near the Sorbonne university in Paris late Thursday.
Young people threw stones at police, who released tear gas and fired rubber pellets at leaders of the protest. An undetermined number of vehicles were torched and businesses were vandalized, police said. It's estimated 100,000 protesters turned out in Paris alone, met by hundreds of police equipped with riot gear. Other violence was reported in the city of Rennes. In Toulouse, students trying to shut down the university clashed with others who wanted to keep it open. The participants tossed chairs and forced open windows, said the university's president.
Politicians say the new law, passed a week earlier, will encourage employers to take a chance on hiring young workers because they won't be locked in if they decide they've made a bad choice. Government spokesman Jean-François Copé said since 70 per cent of young workers are on temporary contracts today, the new "contract for a first job" is an improvement. "The situation is already dramatic," he told CBC News. "Nothing has worked in the past few years, so we decided to try something different ... It's been tested in other European countries, and every time, youth unemployment went down."
But students say the law allows companies to exploit young employees without offering any job security for the first 24 months. The law has spurred nightly clashes between students and police that have been called the largest student protests in France since the May 1968 riots. A day of action last week drew 200,000 protesters in 200 cities. Two-thirds of the country's universities have been closed as a result of student strikes and sit-ins. More demonstrations throughout the country were planned for the weekend, with France's powerful union leaders calling for a million people to turn out on Saturday.
Youth unemployment has long been a problem in France, where 23 per cent of people under age 25 have no job, compared to just 10 per cent of people in the general population. Among young people living in suburbs where immigrant families have settled, the rate is even higher – reaching 50 per cent in some areas. Rioting in many of those neighbourhoods in the fall of 2005 was blamed in part on high unemployment, which some commentators linked to racism by employers.
