The “Nuit Debout” (Up All Night) movement in France spread from the Place de la République (Republic Square) to prime minister Manuel Valls’ house over the weekend.
Eight people were arrested and demonstrators faced teargass as they converged on Valls. The protestors hung up a dummy of Valls with the slogan “La Valls Est Finie” (Valls is finished).
Valls hopes to quiet the protestors with free aid to job seekers and more rent subsidies.
Thousands Protest Nightly at Place de la République
Valls is Finished
March on Valls House Unsuccessful
Above images from France24 article In pictures: ‘Up All Night’ Protesters March on PM’s Home
Some 2,000 people gathered in Place de la République on Saturday to share their aspirations for change. Galvanised by weeks of protests over the Socialist government’s labour reforms seen as threatening workers’ rights, the Up All Night (Nuit Debout) movement is an amalgamation of left-leaning causes.
Participants may be fighting for the environment, against Islamophobia and homophobia, for better housing, against unhealthy food – or all of the above.
The protests have mainly been nonviolent, but several hundred people marching from Place de la République towards the central Paris home of Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Saturday were turned away by riot police using tear gas. Valls was not home at the time but on a visit to Algeria.
Up All Night began in Paris and has now spread to around 50 other cities across France, as well as to Belgium and Spain. Its activists occupy central city squares overnight and vacate them in the morning.
“Get Indignant!” is painted on a paving stone in the vast Paris square, a nod to Spain’s Indignados, who gave rise to the far-left Podemos party.
Up All Night also emulates the anti-capitalist Occupy movement in the United States and Greece’s anti-austerity 700 Euro Generation.
“We haven’t seen this for a long time,” said Emeric Degui, 33, an activist with Désobéir (Disobey). The protests against the labour reforms have “awakened awareness”, he said.
Valls Meets Student Leaders
Today, the BBC reports Valls Met Student Leaders, Promising Jobseeker Aid.
Mr Valls announced the new aid package during a meeting with student leaders on Monday. It includes a four-month subsidy for graduates who face financial hardship while seeking work. There will also be a state housing guarantee for people under 30, which could apply to 300,000 people renting property.
The leader of France’s main student organisation Unef, William Martinet, welcomed Mr Valls’ package but said the protests against the labour bill would continue.
The labour bill would remove some of the protection workers enjoy against being laid off, in a bid to encourage businesses to hire more people.
It envisages giving employers more flexibility in setting the hours that their staff work; lowering the current high barriers to dismissal of staff; and new rules on industrial tribunal payouts.
Many Socialist voters see the current labour protections and 35-hour working week as key achievements that must not be sacrificed for a pro-business economic agenda.
Socialist Key Achievements
Those “key achievements” are precisely why French unemployment is so high and France is so messed up. Businesses do not want to hire people because they cannot get rid of them once they do.
In essence, the economically illiterate “Nuit Debout” consortium is begging for more pain. Free money and state housing guarantees will not fix the problem, it will only make matters worse.
Comparison to US
Support for “Nuit Debout” is roughly equivalent to support in the US for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. US citizens feel betrayed, especially by the student loans system, bank bailouts, and loss of jobs to China.
The “social contract is broken” and no one seems to know how to fix it.
For further discussion, please see Steen Jakobsen Explains the Rise of Trump “Social Contract is Broken”
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
The social contract was patent bullshit that J. J. Rousseau dreamed up and sold to TPTB when divine right lost its lustre.
The french invented a solution already. The guillotine. All someone has to do is look back in history, that is unless the government rewrote the actual history like ours does in th US.
V. Lenin referred to those people as “Useful idiots”.
These socialists are not naïve, they understand that the French laws will collapse the society.
Just declare the new definition of full time work as 15-20 hrs per week and make it voluntary if you want to work more (and get paid more of course too). Then supplement every new full time worker’s purchasing power with a universal dividend and a deflationary discount to prices distributed directly to everyone and voila, virtually no unemployment, everyone has a near middle class income or above and an economy running on all cylinders.
Why should businesses be strapped to create more jobs than competition, innovation and AI can profitably produce?
The Protestant work ethic is severely lacking in France.
I don’t think the French understand that the objective is to maximize the number of low-paying, menial jobs. They seem to think that there is value in fewer, higher paying more stable jobs. Obviously economic illiterates.
At least French University student “leaders” do. What do they care about a lack of menial jobs? They get to put “negotiated with prime minister” on their C.V.
“Valls is Finished”
Valls may be finished, but the laws of math will not submit.
Make matters worse for who exactly Mish? Things could not be much worse for the working people of France and all those throughout the western economies, especially in America. At least the French have the balls to stand up for their hard earned rights. As an economist you should know that it is neoliberal policies championed by the right that led to the ’08 crash that has given us eight years of austerity whilst the banks and financial markets of the world have continued their hypothecated debt binge at everyone’s expense. Desperate people do desperate things, sometimes that makes things worse before they get better, don’t shoot the messenger.
http://www.lesechos.fr/politique-societe/politique/021825023398-jeunes-un-terrible-constat-dechec-pour-hollande-1212331.php
They are making matters worse for those they claim to be helping. The truism that workers that are hard to fire, are too expensive to hire, is not just some empty “neoliberal” slogan. It is literally how the world works. And not just how our “neoliberal” world currently works. But rather, how every conceivable world anywhere can possibly work. Every time you hire someone, you take a risk. You have at best a hunch that he may work out. If getting a hiring decision wrong, means you are stuck paying him for the rest of his life, you will be very, very careful; or need to be very very desperate, before hiring anyone. So you will instead do your best to outsource whatever needs doing, generally to less crazily regulated countries.
The “neoliberal” policies that needs to be fought, are not those that increase freedom for people to organize their lives as they see fit. But rather the ones that prevents people from doing so. Instead of the state handing out “rent subsidies”, get rid of zoning full stop. Which will, given that the most optimistic developer at the margin will always overestimate demand for his product (a kind of winners curse more broadly applied), result in plenty of vacant housing, and virtually no pricing power for landlords at all. Cheap living, done deal. For everyone. Forever. One less so called “problem” to waste more of peoples time and resources on needlessly.
Then get rid of protections for the jobs almost exclusively held by members of the “elite.” Let the same flexible labor market that the “neoliberals” are rightly prescribing for floor sweepers, apply equally to doctors, lawyers, bankers, judges etc….. And honestly politicians and generals as well, but that one may fly a bit over the head of most Europeans for the time being.
And, of course, get rid of the Euro, the Franc, the whatever, and let people pay in what they feel like. BTC or Gold. And collect taxes, the few needed, in Gold. This will overnight reduce subsidies to the banksters and their ilk the only way those will ever be reduced: By rendering them impossible. Which will ensure that “the financial system” will collapse. Which is a very, very good thing. In fact, the best thing.
beautifully stated
Mish
The far-left protestors don’t seam to realize some of their demands clearly belong on the right.
“The labour bill would remove some of the protection workers enjoy against being laid off, in a bid to encourage businesses to hire more people.”
Ten thousand French millionaires left France in 2015. They were the employers. The French business exodus has become a panic. The socialist gravy train is leaving the station. The French have a right to earn a living the old fashioned way. Hire and fire at will for $5/hour or whatever they are worth for 40 hours a week. The permanent French and American underclass have much in common. They are not worth hiring under current regulations and taxpayers cannot afford to continue feeding them.
“La Valls Est Finie” is a play on words that means both “Valls is finished” and “The waltz is over” (“Valls” sounds the same as “valse”, the french word for walt)…
Valls was not born in France, did not become French until his teenage years and has admitted his allegiance to Israel. He was nominated because of his huge popularity with women voters. Another perfect example of what happens when emotions and vagina driven politics are chosen over facts and reason and how women and the politicians who cater to them are destroying western civilization.
La Valls est finie is a pun, also meaning the waltz is finished, i.e. the party’s over.