Source: AP via Yahoo News
Sorry, our French brethren. You are now more like America than you know and ever want to be.
Protest organizers urged President Jacques Chirac on Saturday to prevent the law from taking effect as expected in April.
The law would allow businesses to fire young workers in the first two years on a job without giving a reason, removing them from protections that restrict layoffs of regular employees.
Companies are often reluctant to add employees because it is hard to let them go if business conditions worsen. Students see a subtext in the new law: make it easier to hire and fire to help France compete in a globalizing world economy.
Police loosed water cannons and tear gas on rioting students and activists rampaged through a McDonald's and attacked store fronts in the capital Saturday as demonstrations against a plan to relax job protections spread in a widening arc across France.
The protests, which drew 500,000 people in some 160 cities across the country, were the biggest show yet of escalating anger that is testing the strength of the conservative government before elections next year.
At the close of a march in Paris that drew a crowd of tens of thousands, seven officers and 17 protesters were injured during two melees, at the Place de la Nation in eastern Paris and the Sorbonne University. Police said they arrested 156 people in the French capital.
It looks like big business trumps over citizens' rights, even in France.
Tags: [France], [Sorbonne University], [Paris], [French riot over jobs law], [plan to relax job protections]
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