Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
France's new leftwing government is facing the first big challenge of its honeymoon period as it attempts to contain the country's rising unemployment problem and manage delicate talks with unions and business leaders over reforms.
On Tuesday, the new prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault held his first talks with union leaders to discuss the job situation, but was immediately handed a list of companies that might cut jobs in what some fear might be an avalanche of closures and lay-offs following an unofficial freeze on mass-sackings during the presidential election campaign.
The hardline CGT union named 46 companies it said were planning to shut production sites, warning about 45,000 jobs were directly threatened, with thousands more in danger indirectly.
Plants feared to be in difficulty range from major car manufacturers and furniture retailers to Doux, the Brittany-based European leader in processed chicken products.
Ayrault is the most popular French prime minister since the second world war, according to one poll less than two weeks after he took office. But the government now faces the difficult task of honouring a promise by the new Socialist president François Hollande to reverse rising unemployment and shore up France's struggling manufacturing sector.
Unemployment, at a 12-year high of almost 10%, remains the number one worry of French people who go to the polls again next month in parliamentary elections. New figures out on Wednesday are expected to show jobless numbers still climbing.
The Socialists need a parliamentary majority in June's assembly elections if Hollande is to be able to enact his election manifesto.
Ayrault's talks on jobs, pay and pensions are part of preparations for a major July labour summit, but he faces difficult negotiations over the minimum wage, which unions want to see significantly raised, while business leaders have urged caution, also warning that French companies are burdened with high charges and too much red-tape. There are also questions over the mechanics of partially reversing Nicolas Sarkozy's pension reform which raised the retirement age to 62. Hollande has promised to allow those who began work early, at 18 or 19, to retire at the lower age of 60.
The first difficulty during the parliamentary election campaign is to stave off factory closures.
"We want to deal with these lay-off plans immediately," François Chérèque, head of the CFDT union, France's largest by membership, told Europe 1 radio. "We are urgently requesting the state to focus on jobs. Jobs are the number one problem."
No comments:
Post a Comment