[Opinion] French Lessons

On March 22, 1968, eight students, including Daniel Cohn-Bendit (now a European parliament member), raided and occupied the dean’s office in Nanterre University located in the suburbs of Paris. He demanded the release of his comrades who had been arrested for protesting the U.S. war in Vietnam. Other students refused to attend classes in protest of France’s contradictory system and industrial society, and union strikes were widespread. It was France’s first labor and academic riot in history.

That May, stones and tear bombs were thrown all over France, in protests that paralyzed the government and French industries. It was this “May 68 Revolution” that inflamed activist groups in Germany, Italy, and U.S. that same year.

France is now suffering from its second “May 68 Revolution.” The Contrat de Premiere Embauche (CPE) plan that allows companies to fire workers under the age of 26 in order to fight prolonged high unemployment and stagnant growth is facing protest. The French government has decided that the country’s two percent annual growth will not relieve the country’s 23 percent youth unemployment rate, and is determined to enhance the flexibility of the labor market through the CPE. But college students and laborers are campaigning against the insecure employment it would bring about. About 1,500,000 people joined in a nationwide protest to that effect on March 18.

The criticism directed at the protests was scathing. The German magazine Der Spiegel said, “May 68 was a fight between the next generation and existing order, but now youth is fighting for its own rights.” Even the leader of May 68, Cohn-Bendit, denounced the protests, saying, “Students these days fear change and insecurity.”

It is possible, however, that had the French government played their “revolution” card to break the rigidity of the labor market earlier, bloodshed could have been avoided.

We must let France, stuck in a trap by leftist policies that cling to lifetime employment and welfare instead of growth, be a good lesson to Korea. What can we give to posterity if we’re too busy devouring the pie instead of growing it, and too busy catering to unions to compete? The farmer who sows the seeds for a May 68 could very well be the government and labor union.

Han Gi-heung, Editorial Writer, eligius@donga.com