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European Economic Growth: Change comes hard in France

Posted November 22, 2007

“France refuses to acknowledge that in a global economy, it’s the bidder with the lowest cost, the hardest working workforce, the cheapest wages and a reliable commitment to deliveries who tends to get the order — if quality is the same.” — J. Christoph Amberger

by J. Christoph Amberger, TFN

Baltimore — (TFN): “Our country has to change,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy told French mayors on Tuesday.

That may be a tough order. France refuses to acknowledge that in a global economy, it’s the bidder with the lowest cost, the hardest working workforce, the cheapest wages and a reliable commitment to deliveries who tends to get the order — if quality is the same.

A third of France’s teachers, doctors and civil servants went on strike to protest Sarkozy’s plan to deregulate labor and pensions, reduce government jobs and actually tie wages to performance — a sacrilege worse than asking for ketchup at a five-star restaurant.

At the same time, students protested that a free education wasn’t enough. Four transport unions called for another walkout demanding higher wages, disrupting train and bus services nationwide. Estimates put the damage to the French economy at almost $600 million a day.

Labor disputes and walkouts are one thing you rarely hear about when it comes to China. And you almost never hear about striking workforces in countries that suffer from real and not predicted or otherwise imagined economic hardship.

In the States, large-scale strikes are unimaginable. Sure, late-night television consists of reruns due to a writers’ strike. Broadway shows are cancelled because of striking stagehands. United Auto Workers walk out of troubled assembly plants. But overall, it would seem to me that the American economy continues to be well prepared to weather global competition.

Let the dollar devalue just a tad more against the euro, and I have a feeling that come 2008, the French may not be quite as eager to strike, as global competition works its magic on the French way of life.


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Posted by J. Christoph Amberger · Filed Under Politics 

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