France stands firm on job law

PARIS -- The French government yesterday defended a job law that has provoked mass protest marches, and played down a threat from unions of a possible general strike if it does not nullify the law by tonight.

A spokesman, Jean-François Copé, said the government passed the law, which lets employers dismiss people under 26 for any reason in a two-year trial period. The aim is to employ youths.

Opponents of the First Job Contract law, including unions, student groups, and leftist parties, argue that it is regressive and that it will create a generation of disposable French workers insecure about their employment.

''What is our objective? It is to mobilize against unemployment, especially among youths," Copé said on LCI television. Unemployment stands at 9.6 percent in France, and at more than 20 percent for young people.

Asked about the ultimatum, he said he would not use the term. ''Are we really in that kind of logic? Is that the most suitable word for the situation?" he asked.

Copé said Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's government was open to dialogue as a means of finding a way to improve the measures within the law.

But he gave no hint that it could be withdrawn or suspended.

His comments were likely to harden the sentiment of student and union leaders behind protests on Saturday that, organizers said, brought 1.5 million people onto the streets in 160 marches across the country. Police reported 500,000 protesters.

Unions and leftist parties expressed support for a general strike on Thursday, said Olivier Besancenot, a Trotskyite leader. More protests are also threatened.

Opposition to the law has provoked a crisis for Villepin. It also has arisen a year before elections in which he could run to replace President Jacques Chirac.

''To hold on would seem to be Villepin's leitmotiv . . . even after a week that has seen the reinforcement of the struggle" against the new agreement, ''and a day of major protests," said a signed front-page editorial in the newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.

But an analyst and top editor said the government would eventually be forced to bow to the pressure, which included a poll showing widespread opposition.

''It's impossible for the government to hold on now. There were too many people in the streets . . . The government will have to get out of this crisis by suspending the CPE," said Christophe Barbier, deputy editor of the weekly magazine L'Express. He was using the French initials for the First Job Contract, or the Convention de Premier Emploi.

''The political cost will be enormous for this defeat. But he would reap an even bigger political cost governing a country that's blocked in the event of a general strike," Barbier said of Villepin.

Police said 500,000 people had marched and 167 had been arrested in Paris after rioting followed the march. They said 17 protesters and seven members of the security forces had been injured.

About 60 percent of voters want the First Job Contract withdrawn, according to an opinion survey by the BVA polling organization for the Dépêche du Midi, a regional newspaper based in Toulouse. In answer to a separate question, 69 percent said the marchers were justified.

In a counter demonstration, about 1,000 rightist students rallied in Paris yesterday to demand that they be allowed to study, witnesses said. Students against the First Job Contract have blocked many universities only weeks before examinations begin.

The First Job Contract protests have provided a rallying point for leftist parties and unions set to meet today to decide on their course of action, though the opposition Socialist Party has not taken a firm position on the matter.

France's unemployment rate is as high as 40 percent to 50 percent in some poor suburbs hit by weeks of youth rioting last autumn.