French labour law: Government forced to use emergency powers to push through controversial changes by force

The French government has resorted to its emergency powers to impose changes in employment law which have provoked violent protest in recent days.

In a stinging reverse for President François Hollande a year before elections, the government failed to persuade a blocking minority of its own Socialist deputies to support plans to simplify and loosen France’s complex rules on hiring and firing.

Defying increasingly angry street protests by militant unions and students, the government moved to by-pass a parliamentary vote and impose the changes by decree in the next few days.

The Prime Minister Manuel Valls told parliament – to scattered boos and heckling – that he had been authorised by a cabinet meeting to use clause 49.3 of the constitution to “engage the government’s responsibility” and push through the changes. Unless the government loses a confidence vote – which seems unlikely – the reforms will become law.

“The country must move forward,” Mr Valls said. A “balanced and coherent reform, intended to encourage employers to create jobs, “must be seen through to the end.”

The government had compromised on its original proposals, he pointed out, to the satisfaction of more “reformist” unions. Nevertheless, at least 40 government deputies were threatening to block the changes.

This is the second time in two years that the Valls government has been forced to use emergency powers to push through market-friendly reforms against the wishes of part of the Socialist parliamentary party.

Despite substantial concessions made to moderate unions, the changes are the first serious attempt by any recent administration to lighten the regulatory obstacles to job creation in France. The centre-left government insists that less rigid labour laws are in the best interests of young people and the country’s 3,500,000 jobless.

The right-wing opposition dismisses the changes as an “empty shell” – although the proposals go beyond anything attempted by the former president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

The reforms will make it easier for employers to terminate long-term contracts when their businesses are struggling. They will permit local agreements between employers and workers to modify the 35 hour working week and other labour regulations.

Hard line union federations say the changes would, in effect, end the principle of a single nationwide body of legal protections for workers. Unions representing only 30 per cent of workers in one factory or office could call for a referendum to approve or reject a local agreement to set aside regulations including some aspects of the 35 hour week.