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AP: France’s Macron faces test in parliamentary elections

K

KSweeley

Member
Link: https://apnews.com/cbb4f355b7be49e5...-Macron-faces-test-in-parliamentary-elections

PARIS (AP) — French voters are choosing lawmakers in the lower house of parliament on Sunday in a vote that is crucial for newly-elected president Emmanuel Macron.

A total of 7,882 candidates are running for 577 seats in the National Assembly in Sunday's first round of the two-stage legislative elections. Top vote-getters advance to the decisive second round June 18.

Polls suggest the elections will strongly favor Macron's party and dramatically shake up French politics, punishing the traditional left and right parties and leaving no single strong opposition force.

Macron's year-old centrist movement, Republic on the Move, is seeking an absolute majority to be able to implement his campaign promises, which include simplifying labor rules and making it easier to lay off workers in hopes of boosting hiring.

The government outlined the main themes of a major labor reform that has already angered French unions and is likely to prompt tensions over the summer.

Macron also plans to quickly pass a law to strengthen security measures — effectively making the state of emergency permanent, after multiple Islamic extremist attacks in France — and another one that he says will put more ethics into French politics.

The government needs a new Assembly in place to vote on the bills.

Macron called on French voters to give him a ”majority to make changes" on the night of his victory May 7. ”That's what the country wants and that's what it deserves," he said.

A minimum of 289 seats is required to secure an absolute majority.

According to the latest polls, Macron's movement appears in a position to win potentially as many as 400 seats.
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E

Escape Goat

Member
Its funny to me that a country with a little more than 3 times the population of New York City has fielded nearly 8,000 candidates.
 
J

JonnyDBrit

Member
Escape Goat said:
Its funny to me that a country with a little more than 3 times the population of New York City has fielded nearly 8,000 candidates.
Click to expand...

...? France has a population in the range of 65 million, and NYC's population is 8.5 million.

Should be an interesting election to watch though. A President with no incumbent ministers is a rare thing.
 
S

Simplet

Member
Slaughter in Paris, it looks like Macron is on track to have almost three times as many MPs as all the others parties put together,

Historic result, you can only compare it to the first election of the Fifth republic when De Gaulle was president.

They´re forecasting 415 to 455 MPs for Macron next sunday,
 
K

kirblar

Member
shamanick said:
Macron is intensely anti-labor and that's why I don't like him
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France's labor laws aren't like those in the US. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...0c031eab644_story.html?utm_term=.6df9f9baf645

The problem isn’t generous health-care benefits or onerous environmental protections or the usual “job-killing” regulations that American politicians so often vilify — and that the French love.

It’s that it’s virtually impossible, or at the very least prohibitively expensive, to fire employees. Which makes hiring employees unattractive, too.

In France, firings and layoffs can generally happen under very limited circumstances, including gross negligence and “economic reasons.” Laid-off employees can then challenge their dismissals in court, where judges are seen as somewhat hostile to employers.

Judges, for example, have wide latitude in deciding what counts as a justifiable “economic reason” for a layoff. They may decide that multinational firms that are losing money in France are not allowed to pare back their French workforce if they are collectively profitable in other countries, according to Jean-Charles Simon, an economist and former manager of the country’s main employer organization, Mouvement des Entreprises de France, or MEDEF.

A layoff in such a case could be deemed unfair. Furthermore, there is no cap on the damages that judges can award for unfair dismissal, meaning employers’ potential risks are essentially limitless. The whole process can take years to resolve, too.

Unsurprisingly, employers turn whenever possible to temporary, short-term contract workers, who enjoy fewer protections. This has led to a two-tier labor market with ironclad job security for some and virtually none for the rest.

In fact, about two-thirds of job contracts signed each year are fixed-term arrangements lasting less than a month, according to Francis Kramarz, director of CREST (the Center for Research in Economics and Statistics) and professor at École Polytechnique and ENSAE. Young workers often find themselves doomed to an endless series of short-term gigs, with no opportunities for upward mobility.

In addition to job protections, other rigid policies have made France a difficult place to run a business, particularly for smaller firms.

Only about 8 percent of French workers belong to unions, but thanks to French labor law, 98 percent of workers are covered by national, industry-wide union-negotiated contracts. These can set generous and inflexible pay scales, overtime rates and severance packages, regardless of firm size, resources or whether any of its employees actually belong to a union.

Arguably this is one reason larger firms have not pushed harder for market reforms. They know how to work the system, have lawyers on staff and can absorb many of the steep costs that smaller firms cannot.

“This is a system for insiders, and insiders collude to keep it in place,” complains Pierre Cahuc, an economics professor at CREST and École Polytechnique.
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It's a massive mistake to view this through a US lens, because there's really important context for his positions that's missing. France currently has near-10% unenemployment and 22% youth unemployment. (The US? 4-5% unemployment and 8.8% youth unemployment.)

They are two very different countries with very different sets of problems.
 
K

K-Marx

Banned
shamanick said:
Macron is intensely anti-labor and that's why I don't like him
Click to expand...

Yup. What he wants to enact sounds very similar to the system here in the U.S where the employer holds all the cards and what few protections workers have on paper are virtually meaningless due to lack of credible and meaningul enforcement (aka the eeoc and similar agencies are toothless and useless). This obviously leads to a very toxic environment rife with abuse and exploitation.

But Sarko and Hollande attempted similar reforms and labor shut the country down in response, so hopefully Macron is met with even more civil disobedience if he attempts to enact 100% of his platform.
 
K

K-Marx

Banned
Familienoberhauptvogel said:
The other extreme of worker protection is unhealthy as well. I'd have to read into this more but it's not automatically a bad thing.
Click to expand...

One of the biggest issues i have is that he wants to cap awards for wrongful termination at a ridiculously low amount (something like 5x less than the current minimum iirc)

Punitive damages are important to deincentivize bad and unethical behavior from business. If you cap it at a stupidly low amount that they can easily write-off it fails as a deterrence.
 
K

kirblar

Member
K-Marx said:
Yup. What he wants to enact sounds very similar to the system here in the U.S where the employer holds all the cards and what few protections workers have on paper are virtually meaningless due to lack of credible and meaningul enforcement (aka the eeoc and similar agencies are toothless and useless). This obviously leads to a very toxic environment rife with abuse and exploitation.

But Sarko and Hollande attempted similar reforms and labor shut the country down in response, so hopefully Macron is met with even more civil disobedience if he attempts to enact 100% of his platform.
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France is not the United States. Trying to make it so that firms are no longer heavily discincentivized to hire people due to the extreme difficulty of firing them is not a bad thing.
 
C

Chairman Yang

if he talks about books, you better damn well listen
Familienoberhauptvogel said:
The other extreme of worker protection is unhealthy as well. I'd have to read into this more but it's not automatically a bad thing.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it seems like some of you are pretending there are no tradeoffs for worker protection. Generally, more protections for workers are great for existing workers, but bad for people who want to be hired as workers.

In a France with universal basic income, sure, it might be better to boost worker protections (and therefore labour costs). As it is, there are solid arguments to weaken those rights and improve employment.
 
U

UnluckyKate

Member
12669299.png


Previsional results.

He'll sweep the Assembly
 
G

Gurgelhals

Member
UnluckyKate said:
12669299.png


Previsional results.

He'll sweep the Assembly
Click to expand...

Incidentally, Macron is meeting with Theresa May on Tuesday. Maybe he can give her some hints about how to win a sizeable majority in parliamentary elections and stuff... >:)

Edit: FN between 1 and 5 is giving me life. Get fucked, Le Pen.
 
A

azyless

Member
PS is truly dead. Don't know what's going to happen to them and it's where I would place myself on the spectrum so I'm a little worried.
 
G

G.ZZZ

Member
Chairman Yang said:
Yeah, it seems like some of you are pretending there are no tradeoffs for worker protection. Generally, more protections for workers are great for existing workers, but bad for people who want to be hired as workers.

In a France with universal basic income, sure, it might be better to boost worker protections (and therefore labour costs). As it is, there are solid arguments to weaken those rights and improve employment.
Click to expand...

If anything it's the opposite. If France had something like super strong welfare outside of labour (akin to UBI), then it'd make no sense to have welfare associated to labor (minimal wage, collective contracts, protection against firings etc...), because people not working would not be a death sentence. But without other strong safety nets, removing welfare associated to labor and give nothing in returns is just the usual neo-corporativism trickle up economics.

Can't wait for this neo-corporativist stooge to try and enact his policies in France, the bastion of protesting for worker's rights. If he think he can pass laws that remove worker's rights and give nothing in exchange to the population at large, he's in for a huge surprise.
 
G

Gurgelhals

Member
I have a question regarding the specific role of the legislative in French politics: Is the National Assembly an "active" legislative body in the sense that it plays a significant role in coming up with and writing legislative proposals on its own, or is it a more "passive" body in the sense that it mostly just debates and votes on proposals put forward by the government?

I'm just wondering because a significant number of LREM candidates are political novices of whom it would probably be a bit too much to expect them to do the former from the get-go.
 
G

G.ZZZ

Member
All this talk of removing worker's protection and "modernize" the job market remind me of when we did it to "get out of the crysis". Now our unemployement numbers are worse than ever, worker's protections are basically gone down the shitter, and the public sector became a backstabbing mess of people trying to appease each other for end-of-year evaluation instead of actually working. Not to say how absurdly bloated are economic benefits for the poors, which instead of being a single measure are divided in dozens of different economical incentive so that if you want to get all of them you may as well call it a job to fill all that goddamn paperwork and do the proper visits in the various offices.
 
B

BlackRainbowFT

Member
Yeah... My GF is upset about the result but I have a more positive stance. If everything goes down the crapper at least they won't be able to hide behind excuses like "we didn't have a majority". Also there's not much pseudo-left left (i.e., Hollande/Valls' PS) to blame.

Hopefully the French will not lose too many social benefits.

Despite how much I disagree with Macron'ideas I do find it infuriating when people mock En Marche's candidates. They wanted outsiders and newbies... well, quite often they fumble during interviews, etc. Although I disagree with their views, being uneasy before the camera doesn't correlate with your adequacy to do the job.
 
K

Koren

Member
Gurgelhals said:
I have a question regarding the specific role of the legislative in French politics: Is the National Assembly an "active" legislative body in the sense that it plays a significant role in coming up with and writing legislative proposals on its own, or is it a more "passive" body in the sense that it mostly just debates and votes on proposals put forward by the government?

I'm just wondering because a significant number of LREM candidates are political novices of whom it would probably be a bit too much to expect them to do the former from the get-go.
Click to expand...
It's active... The status of the would-to-be law is slightly different (projet de loi vs proposition de loi). They also can thoroughly rewrite laws, in any case.
 
K

Koren

Member
spekkeh said:
Jesus. That's scary though. Supermajorities are never good. But yeah his type of centrism is what France needs right now.
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It's even worse when the center get the supermajority... because what remains of opposition is split in both sides, so won't even agree on what needs to be discuss.

I've been a support of the center for a long time, but I have concerns about En Marche basically not having anything to its left...

BlackRainbowFT said:
Although I disagree with their views, being uneasy before the camera doesn't correlate with your adequacy to do the job.
Click to expand...
Some are somehow scary, though, including in the government... To the point that I believe it correlates a bit.

G.ZZZ said:
If anything it's the opposite. If France had something like super strong welfare outside of labour (akin to UBI), then it'd make no sense to have welfare associated to labor (minimal wage, collective contracts, protection against firings etc...), because people not working would not be a death sentence. But without other strong safety nets, removing welfare associated to labor and give nothing in returns is just the usual neo-corporativism trickle up economics.
Click to expand...
It all depends if you think of people currently working or not working...

It's like those part-time jobs in germany... Good for people that get this instead of nothing, bad for people that get this when they would have got a full-time job if those jobs weren't a thing. I don't believe the raw % of people not working is that a good measurement.


And at the end of the day, there's a remaining question whether any suggested change will bring more jobs or more profits... Medef promised a lot in the past years about employment, results haven't really been studied, I feel.
 
G

Golden_Pigeon

Banned
spekkeh said:
Jesus. That's scary though. Supermajorities are never good. But yeah his type of centrism is what France needs right now.
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It's not centrist at all.

"Anti-terrorist" law put state of emergency law into the regular law. What he plan to do against labour law is straight out Thatcherism.

He is centrist on moral issues, but clearly from the right on economics and security.
 
H

Holden

Member
Frankfurter said:
~FPTP at work again. A party with ~32% is expected to get sth. like 75% of the seats.
Click to expand...

iirc this is one of the changes of the previous (IV) Republic.

The party that controls l'Assemblé controls the government regardless of the current president. Having a very mixed Assemblé could cause a slow and maybe broken government.

Removing FPTP is much more complicated for this type of election. Just like you can't just remove gerry-mandering in the US without causing other problems...
 
K

Koren

Member
Holden said:
iirc this is one of the changes of the previous (IV) Republic.

The party that controls l'Assemblé controls the government regardless of the current president. Having a very mixed Assemblé could cause a slow and maybe broken government.

Removing FPTP is much more complicated for this type of election. Just like you can't just remove gerry-mandering in the US without causing other problems...
Click to expand...
It's one of Macron's promices, though... We'll see how he handles this one.

But the problem is that the Vth has NEVER been thought with legislatives right after the presidentials. Going from 7 years mandate to 5 years mandate for the president broke the system.
 
S

Simplet

Member
At the very least it´s good that we got rid of the hypocrisy. Left-wing governments were elected promising taxes on the rich and great benefits for all and once in government had no choice but to go for reforms, obviously their electorate was going to go nuts. Right-wing govrenments also tried to do reforms but they were always blocked by obstructionism on the left (way easier to rant against reforms when you´re in the opposition) and street protests, not to mention getting bogged in stupid "identity" politics.

At least this time someone has the legitimacy to reform, hasn´t spent the whole campaign lying about what he´s going to do, and doesn´t live in a fucking castle antagonizing all the non-rich people (I´m looking at you Fillon).

Of course the reforms might turn out to be a big mess but at least we´ll give it a real shot for once, and then we can see the results.
 
O

Oriel

Member
Looks like Macron passed this particular test with flying colours.

And the odious FN got hammered which is even better news.
 
U

UnluckyKate

Member
Gurgelhals said:
Incidentally, Macron is meeting with Theresa May on Tuesday. Maybe he can give her some hints about how to win a sizeable majority in parliamentary elections and stuff... >:)

Edit: FN between 1 and 5 is giving me life. Get fucked, Le Pen.
Click to expand...

FN went from 70 to 100 seats projection to ... 1 to 5

This is life indeed. They lost 4.5 millions people. Get recked.
 
K

Khaz

Member
kirblar said:
France is not the United States. Trying to make it so that firms are no longer heavily discincentivized to hire people due to the extreme difficulty of firing them is not a bad thing.
Click to expand...

Chairman Yang said:
Yeah, it seems like some of you are pretending there are no tradeoffs for worker protection. Generally, more protections for workers are great for existing workers, but bad for people who want to be hired as workers.
Click to expand...

You can do that with laws. There is no need for decentralisation.

His goal is to clearly let the companies deal with it, them being in a position of strength against their employees will allow them to pass fucked-up agreements that would never be voted in the parliament, and for good reason.

I'm not opposed to working laws modifications per se, but I do believe that the law should be the same for every worker, and they should have the same rights and duties regardless of the company employing them. That applies to civil servants and private workers.
 
W

Wvrs

Member
Fairly amusing that May and Macron are meeting tomorrow, the former off the back of a humiliating loss of majority, the latter with this landslide.
 
B

BladeoftheImmortal

Member
kirblar said:
France's labor laws aren't like those in the US. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...0c031eab644_story.html?utm_term=.6df9f9baf645


It's a massive mistake to view this through a US lens, because there's really important context for his positions that's missing. France currently has near-10% unenemployment and 22% youth unemployment. (The US? 4-5% unemployment and 8.8% youth unemployment.)

They are two very different countries with very different sets of problems.
Click to expand...
I'd rather be unemployed in France than employed with a minimum wage job in America.
 
S

Souldriver

Member
The projected seat distribution is scary. What a success for Macron.

I still like the result though. Pro European centrist taking France by storm and marginalizing FN in the process.
 
E

Elandyll

Banned
gutter_trash said:
Centrist awesomeness!

I love it!

Now tackle bureaucracy and modernize
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This.

I am a flaming lefty in the US, but, as a French person, the French system needs much modernizing and I think Macron will be the one to do it. Hopefully.

Safety nets are needed, but the way they are implemented in France tends to paralyze hiring. Sundays and evenings needs to be fully open for work, among other things.

Let's remove barriers to employment, keep needed benefits and safety nets, and modernize the whole dusty juggernaut that is the French gov.
 
C

Condom

Member
Ac30 said:
The problem is the fixed-term contracts. That sounds like absolute hell.
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As a Dutch person: they are.

'Modernizing' the job markets just meant worse and worse conditions for workers. Nobody can afford homes anymore (even rentals are hard) because banks and tenants don't want to do deal with the uncertainty. No mortgages, no rents.

Of course every country will discover this when it's already too late, just like we did. Change and streamlining is needed but the last one you should trust with this are liberals.
 
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