Chirac backs new labour law but protests rage on

FRENCH president Jacques Chirac said last night that he would press ahead with a contentious labour law that would make it easier to fire young workers - but offered some concessions in the hope of calming furious protests and strikes.

In one of the most highly-anticipated televised addresses of his 11-year presidency, Mr Chirac said he would reduce a trial period during which employees could be summarily dismissed from two years to one, and would require employers to offer reasons.

In preserving the principle that workers under 26 would face a lack of job security, Mr Chirac came down on the side of his prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, who has argued that businesses will welcome the added flexibility and that the new law would help reduce France’s chronic youth unemployment rates.

The new type of job contract, Mr Chirac said, “can be an effective tool for employment”.

Even before he spoke, students gathered in Paris and other main cities to continue their protests against the First Job Contract.

“It is time to defuse the situation,” Mr Chirac said, adding he understood the concerns of youths who could not find jobs.

Youth unemployment is running at a 22% high above France’s 9.6% national average.

Opposition Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande said Mr Chirac had failed to calm the atmosphere and there was now “much to fear... I think he made things more complicated where he should have made them more simple”.

“There will be more demonstrations,” he said.

Students staged an initial protest during the day at the Bastille monument, a favourite starting point for French protests in Paris, and called for a further demonstration later at the same place.

Dominique Barbet, senior economist, at BNP Paribas said: “The law has been largely emptied of content but the trade unions, students, and opposition just refuse the law altogether so the protests are likely to continue.”