Bid to soothe job-law chaos

FRANCE - Despite spreading youth unrest, President Jacques Chirac was expected to sign into law last night the "easy hire-easy fire" jobs contract for the young which has plunged France into political and social crisis.

However, Chirac - in a gamble which may yet backfire - is expected to call an immediate "social" conference to try to negotiate a replacement for the law that he will have just signed.

Hopes that France's constitutional watchdog body, the Conseil Constitutionel, would cut through the gordian knot of an increasingly muddled, bad-tempered and ideological dispute were dashed this week when council members declared that the new equal opportunities law, including the disputed "contrat premiere embauche" (CPE), or first job contract, did not infringe the constitution of the Fifth Republic.

Chirac now has a week in which to decide whether to sign and promulgate the law.

His Prime Minister, and long time protege, Dominique de Villepin, has made it clear he will resign, plunging the French centre-right into crisis, if Chirac backs down.

Sources in the Elysee Palace say Chirac will propose a solution which may appeal to all sides.

Chirac is expected to propose a round-table conference of the Government, trades unions, student groups and employers.

He is likely to promise that any agreement on jobs law for the young reached by such a conference - called a "grenelle" after the successful two-day talks in the Ministry of Labour in the Rue de Grenelle in 1968 - would substitute for Villepin's hated youth contracts.

One of the Gaullist ministers involved in the first grenelle 38 years ago was the then junior Labour Minister Jacques Chirac.

It was Villepin's refusal to consult the "social partners" on the CPE which has helped to stoke the intensity of the opposition among trade and student unions. Chirac may now, in effect, sign the youth contracts into law and then call negotiations.

But his hopes of saving Villepin's face - and his own - could yet be dashed. The French left, from students' groups to the centre-left Socialist Party, have the scent of political blood in their nostrils.

Both trade union and student leaders have refused to enter talks with the Government until the CPE is withdrawn or suspended. It remains to be seen if all, or any, of the many mutually suspicious groups involved would heed Chirac's proposal and call off the protests, including nation-wide strikes and marches planned for Tuesday.

In a series of hit-and-run actions this week, students blocked railway lines at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, and at Rennes, Limoges, Brest, Marseilles, Lille and other provincial stations.

There were also blockages by lycee and university students on the Boulevard Peripherique around Paris and on the road approaches to Nantes, Rennes, Grenoble, Limoges, Lille and several other cities.

The job contract was intended by Villepin as a way of reducing 23 per cent unemployment among the young. It has been rejected by left-wing student unions and all five trade union federations as an "ultra-capitalist" attempt to deny young people the job security enjoyed by their parents.

The CPE would provide a two-year trial period in which workers aged 26 or younger could be fired without explanation (but with compensation ).

Villepin argues that this will make it easier for small and medium-sized companies to offer jobs to unqualified or under-qualified young people.

-THE INDEPENDENT