Chirac says he’ll sign disputed labor law

PARIS – French President Jacques Chirac said Friday he will sign a controversial youth jobs law that has sparked more than three weeks of street protests and violence, but he proposed changes to restore some protections to young workers in an effort to stanch the burgeoning social unrest.

“It’s time to defuse the situation,” Chirac said in a televised address to the nation. “The main priority has to be the national interest.”

Union leaders and political opponents immediately denounced Chirac’s attempted compromise as unacceptable and said the nationwide strikes and demonstrations would continue.

“The current state of social tension is such that I fear the president just put oil on the fire,” said Bruno Julliard, head of the National Student Union, which has led the largest street protests in France in decades.

Political analysts said Chirac was facing the most dangerous political crisis in nearly 11 years as president because the controversial law has become a symbol of a widening divide in French society. Last fall’s rash of violence in poor, immigrant neighborhoods outside Paris subsided after three weeks, but the student demonstrations against the jobs law have become larger and more violent after three weeks.

Both the angry youths of the suburbs – most of whom were the French-born children of North African immigrants – and the college and high school students marching through the hearts of French cities complain that France’s rigid political system has ignored the concerns of the country’s new generation. The French unemployment rate, just below 10 percent, is one of the highest in Europe. The average unemployment rate for young people is more than 20 percent, and the joblessness among the offspring of poor immigrants is between 40 and 50 percent.

The law Chirac approved Friday would allow employers to fire workers under the age of 26 any time during their first two years on the job.

Chirac said Friday that he would propose amendments to the law, cutting the probationary period from two years to one and giving young workers other protections, which he did not specify. The French president reiterated that the purpose of the law was to give companies an incentive to hire more young people. The country’s labor laws are so stringent that many companies are reluctant to hire young people because it is virtually impossible to fire them without huge financial penalties.