What's a President to do?

France is still rioting. Next Wednesday the unions and student leaders have called for a nation-wide strike; it's a good thing that I'm coming back from Paris on Monday; if I'd planned to return on Weds, I'm sure these plans would be nixed. Anyway, the labor unions and the students are saying they won't negotiate until the CPE is gone. De Villepin (Dominique Marie François René Galouzeau de Villepin to his close friends), who headed this whole CPE thing, is desperately seeking support, and has so far refused to scrap the plan. Sarkozy (or Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa to his intimates) is biding his time and waiting for de Villepin to collapse so he can sweep in and save the French right and [of course] become president in the process. Chirac, has remained fairly quiet letting his feuding underlings grow their own wings. But many people are asking - where is Jacques? Is he still alive? After his "vascular incident" last year he has dropped from public view and some people (me at least) are wondering if he didn't die and the government is just holding the image of him up until they can figure out the next best course of action (we are talking about a huge bureaucracy; it wouldn't happen over night). You all saw "Dave" right? If they can do it at the White House, they can do it at the Elysée Palace.

Anyway, that was all proven false yesterday in Brussels where Jacques Chirac is back in stunning fashion. When the French head of the EU Business lobby, Ernest-Antoine Seillière, gave a speech in English because it is "the language of business." Chirac threw a tantrum and stormed out with his Finance and Foreign Ministers. The news reports that I have seen do not delve into subject any more than to report that Jacqu-o left and that Seilliere and the French government are at odds for, among other things, the official governmental policy of "what is French is French and we don't give a s--t what is good for the economy as long as Suez, Sanofi, Thales, Alstom, etc, remain part of the FRENCH economy." Of course when it's a French company* doing the buying there's no problem.

I am getting off track here; what started as a criticism of Chirac has [once again] degraded into a criticism of the French economy in general...why does this always happen? Anyway, as I was saying, I don't know any of the inside story as to why Chirac stormed out, but does it matter? The man speaks English...well. Crying about something won't change the fact that English is much more used in the world and in the world of business than French. Yep, your all-expense paid trips to famous French chateaux may convert a few EU Politicians to speak a little French, but are you kidding. The Indians and the Chinese and the Saudis and the Russians are not going to learn French when they can already get by with their limited English.

This whole problem is France's fault though. The French language demands an enormous amount of study and focus to speak and write. With something like 80,000 different conjugations per verb it's a lot of work. On top of this, the French are very stuffed up about the practice of the language. A French person that makes a speaking error is below dirt. A peasant at best. Foreigners get a little bit of slack, but they are insanely rigid about the language...There is no English Academy (of course the site wouldn't be in English) to define the "real" words in the language - we let society determine this, not a bunch of stuffed shirted sitting in some huge library in Paris. If everyone is speaking English it's because it is an easy language to speak poorly, but we don't really care how you speak it - as long as we can get the jist of what you're saying. I read somewhere that people can effectively do business with 500 English words. That's not a lot considering that there are around one-half million recognized English words. French has around 100,000 (less if you consider L'Academie's numbers), but sometimes I think you need all of them; plus certain French people like to shove their vocabulary down your throat - it's a mark of honor if you can use a word that the other person doesn't know.

The meeting was also discussing certain nationalistic attitudes taken by certain EU countries to ensure that certain companies remain part of these certain countries. I think Chirac was trying to make a point about the whole thing, but if anything this makes him look dumber.

*Yeah, I know that the Alcatel-Lucent talks are about a "merger of equals," but does such a thing exist? In a merger of equals, Alcatel would account for about 65% of the combined company...

Don't work, burn a car

Where to start? I'm sure you heard about the new rioting in France (if you haven't look here or here, or here, here, or ici). If it's not ghetto immigrants burning cars, it's upper class white kids. 'Course there's a big difference here - the CRS (French SWAT basically) doesn't confine these protesters to the banlieues around the city, but allows them into the downtown areas to ply their arsonistic tendencies. I have read the theory that this may be a concerted effort by the Republic to allow the protesters to lose public support by over-doing it. Whatever, if this is the government's grand plan to keep the CPE, it's going to be a tough sell with the polls saying around 68% (last week) of the people were against these new contracts.

Ok, here's the thing. In theory the law is a good one. France needs to liberalize their economy. Let's take me for example: I worked for 1 year as an intern, which doesn't count as real work for the government; basically meaning I don't pay taxes on it and the company doesn't pay tax on me. Then I was kept on as a contract employee for 6 months. I left after 6 months and now the government is going to pay me, for up to 7 months, about 70% of my previous take-home pay. It's nice, sure; I'm not even gaming the system, I'm just following the rules. But I did a little bit of bar napkin math and figure I'll earn about 10 times as much from unemployment as I paid in during my short-term contract. This is one small example of a nation-wide phenomenon. For me, the company was paying about 100% taxes on my pay; meaning that my salary was actually doubled for the employer. I was on a CDD (fixed-length contract), so either myself or the employer could end this whenever the other wished, but figure I sign a CDI (non-fixed-length contract). The company is stuck with me come hell or high water. It's good for the employees, bad for the companies.

Many Anglo news sources have discussed the fact that France needs to change, I am not really going to get into this. Anyone who isn't French and understands anything about today's world knows that things can not continue as is. The thing is that the French could care less what the Americans or the Brits think; on the contrary I am sure that certain protesters who used the Anglo news sources as even more reason to fight this. See, the 'Ricans (this is their [semi-]derogatory name for Americans) think the CPE is a good thing, therefore by definition it must be a bad thing. I was watching the spokesman for the government the other day on the news and it was very funny to watch him describe the type of economy that he (or the government) foresees in the future and he starts to talk about the liberalization of the labor markets, etc, and basically discuss that the changes are needed, like some countries. From the way he was speaking, I totally expected him to say Ireland or Britain (never the US, of course), but he (and I'm sure this was very deliberate on his part) totally avoided Anglo-Saxon countries and said, "Like Spain and the Netherlands who have recently started to liberalize labor markets with very good results."

The problem with the CPE is not the introduction of a new type of contract. I think this is a good idea (much better than the idea that letting everyone work for 35 hours would lead to more jobs) in principle. However, the French mentality is so set on these damn contracts, that the protesters have legitimate axes to grind. There will most definitely be abuses. Right now companies can only hire worker on CDD (short-term) contracts for up to 18 months, I think. In any case, it is a short period of time, and this can only be done in 6-month periods. Therefore, the employees take a temporary-work attitude and it's not really efficient. However, by using one of these CPE contracts, companies can hire workers out of school for up to two years and then fire them after 23 months and hire a new one. IT WILL HAPPEN. Because of this ingrained mentality of contracts they will do everything they can to work around signing CDIs. On top of this, many banks and lending agencies will probably treat this as a temporary contract and not avail young workers to money needed to buy housing, vehicles, whatever. I think the country needs to change, but I'm not sure that one sweep of the pen with a new law such as this can help things.

However the irony is the dinosaur labor unions who are screaming that everything is fine as the French Titanic rolls through the ever darkening skies of the North Atlantic. Nothing is fine and they either don't realize it or don't care. You have to realize that this is an election year. Chirac's term ends soon and the elections will be called early in 2007. The Socialists desperately want to take back the government and they can read the polls just like everyone else. Two-thirds of French people who dislike the CPE are a lot of voters. The unions are going to protest anything that threatens their way of life (maybe they should get together with the UAW in Detroit and discuss things like jobs banks for all of their criticism of the “American labor style”) and the students are sick of being cooped inside all winter and see an opportunity to get out into the early spring sun.

There you go; if you polled me, using the correct words, I too would be against the CPE. I think the country needs radical change and the CPE is the type of thing that needs to be implemented. Maybe it is the first step (the first step is never easy) to changing the mentality of the French (both employers and employees) over the labor markets. Whatever the case, you can not look at it from an American view point and just make a snap judgement that it's the right thing for France. It's much more complicated, as I tried to present here.

French Driving [It gets worse]

File this one under "Do your research before admitting to any driving infractions."

So, most of you know of my on-going struggles with the French government's stringent driving license process. So I jumped through as many hoops as possible, got everything done, finally got my driver's license here and 3 weeks later got "flashed" by unmarked car while doing 62 kph in a 50. Since the car is registered in my wife's name she originally got the ticket; I figured I would do the "right" thing and take the hit. It's a strange process here, but I sent the letter out on Monday to say that it was in fact me driving and that I would lose the point and pay the fine. Today [so Wednesday] I called the prefecture (your one-stop shop for all things bureaucratic here] for this nagging doubt I had about a strange date on my license.

In principle my license should be good for life, but it has a date of 10/14/2005 to 10/14/2008 on it. So I did a little research, didn't fully understand and contacted my friends at the prefecture. Well, it turns out that since they issue licenses here for life, they are incapable of understanding that other governments do not do so. My CT license was issued 10/14/2005 and they recognize this as my driving start-date. I tried to explain to the woman that I have been driving for 11.5 years in the US. She wanted nothing of it. Since 11 of those years were in the great state of NY, which incidentally doesn't have a reciprocal agreement with the French government, it is like I didn't drive for any time (yep, I made it to 28 without driving! Idiots!). So, those dates above are actually the time that I am on probation. 3 years to prove that I can drive. Along with this lovely statute that is reserved for 16 years old (and me), I only have 6 points to play with. So I just shot myself in the foot here. Welp, I now have 5 points for the next 3 years.

I love learning all these fun idiosyncrasies of life in a foreign country. Next time I'm doing my research before I admit to anything and I'm driving at the speed limit (yeah, these things will happen).

Think about the irony

I won't stop chiropracting unless you think about the irony. Sorry for the non-Simpsons fans out there, but I had to make the reference.

Anyway, getting to the irony of the situation:

In 12 years of driving I have never had a speeding ticket. I have slid a couple of cars off of the road - never hurt the vehicle, people or small animals. I have been stopped by the cops twice in the US. Once when I was 18 at 2 in the morning. I was speeding, sure, but the cop was nice and let me go. The second time was at 19 or 20. I got clocked at 78 in a 65. The cop again was fairly nice and I got away with a "failure to obey a traffic device." 2 points and 60 bucks. No big deal.

Anyway, I've been in France for a little over 2 and a half years now. For the first 2 years and 5 months I had a US driver's license that allowed me to drive, but gave me virtual impunity from any traffic related issues - yeah if I got caught speeding or whatever, I would have had to pay the fine, but let's face it, the French government isn't going to contact the NYS authorities to say that I have been speeding or running stop signs. In this time I never had any problem with the French authorities. Now that I am married to a frenchwoman, I had to apply for a French license - I had one year from the date of my marriage - so I had until September 24th 2006 to do this. I figured it was better to do it sooner, rather than later. I spoke with many people about the issues of getting a French driver's license. I couldn't transform my NYS one into a French one because of asine bureaucratic rules. So I moved to CT in October and applied for my own French license in December of 2005. I received my wonderful pink (I don't know why pink) license on the 31st January of 2006. On the 17th February I was clocked at 62kmh (~39 mph) in a 50 (around 31 mph). DAMN IT! Less than 3 weeks! Ok, it's not the same as in the US. I only got 1 point (out of 12) and your insurance premiums are not based on any moving violations that you have - so I really only have to pay the hefty 90 euro fine, but I just can't believe the terrible timing of this freaking ticket!