First Employment Contract - Controversy

Controversy

The CPE sparked debates among the political classes, and drew massive protests from students in the streets of France, along with sudden strikes. Criticism was levied at both the substance of the CPE and the way it was enacted.

Instead of putting the clauses creating CPE inside the bill it was proposing to Parliament, the government chose to submit it as an amendment of its own text. This bypasses some compulsory legal review by the Conseil d'État and reduces the time available for examination by members of the Parliament. Earlier in 2006, president of the Assembly Jean-Louis Debré, though a fellow member of UMP and an ally of Villepin, complained about the Villepin government submitting lengthy amendments of its own bills and said that it showed these bills were badly prepared. Furthermore, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin forced approval of the law by the Assembly on its first reading by invoking article 49-3 of the Constitution: under 49-3, a bill is considered approved in its present state by the Assembly unless the Assembly chooses to dismiss the Prime Minister. Such a move hardly ever occurs, since both the Assembly and the Prime Minister are from the same majority. Use of 49-3 is seen as an infringement on the legislative prerogatives of Parliament and is thus reserved for exceptional cases. As many have pointed out, especially when the Prime Minister announced the use of 49-3, Dominique de Villepin has never run for elected office.

Although the CPE is the primary target of the student movement against the law, other measures of the "Statute on the Equality of Opportunities" have also been contested. Among them, allowing apprenticeships from as young as 14 years old (allowing a youth to leave the standard public education system), night work from the age of 15 (instead of 16 now) and suspension of certain type of welfare measures (families with more than three children have the right to some governmental financial support in France) when students skip school. This last measure has been for a long time in the program of the far-right movement Front National, thus also explaining part of the popular protests. The most controversial part of this new law lies in the way it brings flexibility to employers: this contract allows French employers to fire workers under the age of 26 without juridical motive during the first two years of the contract, among other things.

If the employee seeks juridical recourse against arbitrary firing, the burden of proof would be reversed. In an indefinite contract, the burden of proof was reversed during the probationary period, which lasted from just a few days to three months, depending on the type of job, requiring an employee seeking legal recourse to prove they were unjustly fired rather than the employer to prove just cause for the dismissal.