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Un/Employment

  • Protests Heat Up as France Feels the Chill of Change
    17 March 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    PARIS, March 16 - Once again, students are on the barricades in France, evoking comparisons to the uprising of May 1968. But this is not a revolt. It is not 1968 revisited.
    Certainly, students are taking to the streets and shutting down universities, and tear gas penetrated the heart of Paris. Today, hundreds of thousands of protesters, most of them students, filled the streets and marched in cities throughout France. With teachers, workers, labor union leaders, the jobless, even retirees (…)

  • When a young Frenchman’s fancy turns to revolution
    17 March 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    William Pfaff: When a young Frenchman’s fancy turns to revolution
    Governments in France are unwise to launch initiatives affecting students and the young when springtime approaches and the sap rises. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has put himself in a difficult situation at a moment when the French already suffer depression connected with unemployment, a sense of economic vulnerability and what seems like political futility. This week, Villepin confronts street demonstrations of (…)

  • Student protests erupt across France
    17 March 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    Students want a controversial labour law scrapped
    French students have clashed with riot police across the country, as hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched against a new government youth employment plan.
    At least 250,000 people took to the streets on Thursday in up to 80 towns and cities across France, according to police. Organisers put the figure as high as half a million.
    Student leaders said 120,000 people marched through Paris’s university quarter, although police said (…)

  • France : a look at the growing revolt against CPE
    15 March 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin unveiled his labour law liberalisation package CPE on the 16th of January. He said that “urgent” action was needed to “bring the French labour market into the modern era”. The law would see employers hire 18-26 year olds on two year contract that would allow them to fire the youths without notice, and without explanation.
    In responce, student union bodies called for a week of meetings and mobilisation from 30th january including a call for a (…)

  • French students in new rebellion
    14 March 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    Protests and occupations against the right wing government’s CPE labour law swept France’s universities last week. Danièle Obono, a student at the Sorbonne university in Paris and member of the anti-CPE mobilising committee, writes in a personal capacity about the revolt
    Over half of the 82 universities in France are taking part in strike action against the Tory government’s plans. Twenty five universities are in occupation.
    The anti-CPE movement at the Sorbonne started a week ago - we (…)

  • France : students clash with riot police
    14 March 2006 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    Students clash with riot police protesting first job contract
    Dominique de Villepin showed no signs of bending to student and opposition demands that he abandon a hotly contested measure to combat youth unemployment.
    Hundreds of students clashed with riot police near the Sorbonne University in Paris on Tuesday. The student protests were presenting French President Jacques Chirac’s supposed preferred successor with one of his sternest tests yet in his nine-month tenure as prime minister. (…)

  • Riots in France - against the government’s youth jobs plan
    14 March 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    Students invade Paris school
    Scores of angry students and other demonstrators invaded one of Paris’ most elite schools on Monday and clashed with police in a new escalation of protests against the government’s youth jobs plan.
    About 200 high school and university students swarmed into the College de France to press their demand that Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin withdraw a plan that they fear will hurt job security.
    The protests came a day after Villepin, hoping to defuse the (…)

  • Numbers up at U.S. soup kitchens, Second Harvest says
    14 March 2006 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    BY STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
    WASHINGTON - When Lisa Koch asked several people at a Chicago soup kitchen to complete a survey of the people who eat there, she got a surprising response: "They asked how long it would take because they had to get back to work after lunch."
    A national survey of people eating at soup kitchens, food banks and shelters found that 36 percent came from households in which at least one person had a job. In the Chicago area, it was 39 percent.
    "Even though the economy (…)

  • Sweat Shop Workers Tour US Colleges That Sell Their Products
    14 March 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    By David Swanson
    "It would take half our salary to buy one of the sweat shirts we produce," Josefina Hernandez Ponce told students at the University of Virginia on Wednesday night. The classroom was packed to capacity with students in every seat and squeezed in on the floor.
    A flyer passed around showed where the $39.99 paid for a UVA sweatshirt goes ($2.40 in royalties to the university, $0.20 in pay to the workers who made it).
    But that familiar story wasn’t all that Hernandez Ponce (…)

  • MAINTAINING OUR VALUES
    6 March 2006 par (Open-Publishing)
    3 comments

    MAINTAINING OUR VALUES
    By Peter Fredson
    March 6, 2006
    The give-away of our Port Maintenance by G.W.Bush has threatened the jobs of many thousands of port workers by giving them to foreigners. We understand this is part of his neocon strategy for world dominance through globalization, in which individuals are pawns in his plutocrat empire.
    Our objection is about his denigration of American labor, genius, energy, and industry for purposes of gaining power and wealth.
    Once Bush (…)