Last August, the French parliament passed a bill, Contrat nouvelles embauches or CNE (Contract for New Hires), which made it easier for businesses with fewer than 20 employees to hire—and fire—new recruits. No fuss erupted. Encouraged by the relative calm, the government decided to apply a similar scheme called the Contrat premier emploi or CPE (First Job Contract) for people under 26, of which 23 percent are unemployed. But meanwhile the opposition, including students, had awakened. The CPE allows employers to fire young workers anytime within two years without stating a reason. Firms offering long-term positions after two years are given three-year tax breaks.

Companies that employ more than 250 people have to make CPE participants 1% of their workforce from January next year and 3% by 2008.
Between general assemblies, committee meetings, and demonstrations, we finally caught up with a tired Isabelle Rampa, 22, a student in Psychology in Paris. As a spokeswoman for the National Coordination of Students, which represents students from universities across the country, she answered our questions, punctuated by police sirens, in a café in Montparnasse.

Isabelle Rampa, spokeswoman for the National Coordination of Students © J. Pecheur

Why do you reject the CPE?
That employers can end contracts anytime within two years without stating a reason is a scandal. It puts people in limbo for too long. With the riots last fall, we’ve seen what happens when people live in insecure situations. Why legalize precariousness? Furthermore, if no reason to fire is needed, people will be afraid to stand up, refuse to perform certain tasks, join a union, go on strike. To strike is a basic and fundamental right for workers, we can’t question that.

What does the National Coordination of Students stand for?
We are not just fighting against the CPE. We students started with that, but now the fight is broader. People are tired of living an unstable professional life; it’s a form of social violence.

Don’t you prefer an unstable job to unemployment?
No. That’s not the real debate. We don’t want more precarious jobs. We want real, stable careers.
Considering how the world economy has evolved, don’t you think the work place needs to become flexible?
I don’t see how making it easier to fire people will bring unemployment down. There are already many short-terms contracts, endless internships, interim jobs... We do need reforms that move us forward, that benefit as many people as possible, not laws that suppress rights won years ago. .

Do you think companies should have more incentive to hire young people?
They already use short-term contracts. Now they are just going to wait for one year and a half to fire a young worker and get a new one. The CPE is designed for people without good diplomas or experience so they can easily be replaced. With the CPE, they won’t have to pay social taxes for three years. But these taxes are useful; they pay for our social model. Who is going to pay for that? The workers? The goal is to share companies’ profit. Right now, they fire people while their profits increase.

How do you explain the violent rioters [dubbed casseurs or “breakers”] at the demonstrations?
It is the result of the government’s violence first and foremost. It’s social violence that triggers what we’ve seen in the suburbs last fall. It’s not accurate to dissociate the students from the casseurs. People say rioters have no political motivation, but it’s not always true. This rage has a meaning politically. The students are weary and the rioters are violent, but we are all fed up with this society.

What about the fact that rioters turned against the students?
It’s regrettable, but it’s also understandable. They consider the students bourgeois. We students want to fight side by side with them, because in the end, we are fighting against the same thing. We just voted to use a banner in the next demonstration that reads: “We are all casseurs.”

What’s wrong with France? There was the European constitution, then the riots, now the students…
It’s not only in France that things are bad. It seems that everywhere governments are disconnected from their populations. Things are seriously moving to the right. But the French react: when they disagree, they demonstrate.

What reforms should be enacted?
Right now we are not discussing solutions. Within the Coordination there are many different political currents. First, we want the government to withdraw the law, then will talk.

How does it feel to be 22?
It’s hard to be optimistic right now. We keep hoping, otherwise we wouldn’t be fighting. We are not entering the workforce in the same conditions our parents did, that’s clear. We study for five, six, eight years, and yet we have a high chance to be unemployed. It’s hard to be 22 when you see what is going on in the world, the environment, wars... It’s hard to see youself in the future.