whembly wrote:

 LethalShade wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LethalShade wrote:

Things got pretty hairy in Rennes yesterday, with police breaking a group of protesters by driving in the crowd at a slow pace while teargasing everyone. Some journalists were hit by nightsticks too.

Were the crowd getting ornery or peacefully protesting?

AFAIK, peacefully protesting. The police didn't want them to access a certain part of the city.

That is troubling...

EDIT :

It was a smoke grenade that ignited the police car, not a molotov.

And that makes it better? o.O

Asterios wrote:
when Minimum wage goes up not only do workers wages go up but all costs go up, raising minimum wage is going to hurt small business owners more then anything. which includes fast food since most are Franchises owned by small business owners.

 sebster wrote:

Asterios wrote:
well because if you get an officer of the company who gets a $50,000 a year raise, compared to a few thousand employees who get a $1 an hour raise and say they work an average of 1,500 hours a year (roughly 30 hours a week), you do the math.

You have zero appreciation of the scale of senior executive remuneration. No-one is talking about $50,000 a here, we're talking about CEOs who earn more than that in a day. The CEO of Discovery Communications got more than $150m last year, that's $400,000 a day.

To put that in your example above, a few thousand employees, which I'll assume is 3,000... could get a $15 an hour raise each and it'd cost the same as David Zaslav. But if a company gave 3,000 employees a $15 an hour raise each, I can guarantee you we'd see tomes written about what that would do to competitiveness, but when that money is given to the CEO, no-one even thinks about competitiveness.

problem with people and minimum wage they don't look at the bigger picture, you say hey doubt my burger will go up too much because that burger flipper is getting a raise, problem is he is not the only one getting a raise, the people who transported the items too the store got a raise, the people who stored the items before delivery got a raise, the people who assembled the items to store got a raise, the people who worked the farm got a raise, the people who worked the ranch got a raise, the people who work the gas that went into the vehicles to transport the stuff got a raise, the power companies to run the store got a raise and the list goes on and on which leads to prices being raised even more.

That's total gibberish, basically. If we lived in a world where employees had such bargaining power that simply wanting a raise meant you got one, then your concern would be valid. But outside of a chronically overheated economy that isn't the case. And the US market right now is the exact opposite of an overheated economy.

 Smacks wrote:

Raising the minimum wage being bad for small business is nonsense. And even if it were, why should business have priority anyway? Are we all supposed to live in poverty, just so a few business owners have a handy source of cheap labour they can exploit? Ridiculous!

Asterios wrote:
so the person running a small store doesn't have a right to support his family? but is being muscled into paying his/her employees more then the owner makes?

“The owner, the employees, and the buying public are all one and the same, and unless an industry can so manage itself as to keep wages high and prices low it destroys itself, for otherwise it limits the number of its customers. One’s own employees ought to be one’s own best customers.”

 Smacks wrote:

Asterios wrote:
so the person running a small store doesn't have a right to support his family? but is being muscled into paying his/her employees more then the owner makes?

How many CEOs and Billionaires do you think pop in an do their shopping at your average local corner shop? The people who spend money in little stores are local people who probably have very ordinary jobs: nurse, fireman, waitress, taxi driver etc... Raising the standard of pay and helping those people get more wages, helps the store, and every local business where they might spend their money.

Henry Ford realised this in 1914. He doubled what he paid his workers, to a sum that was considered outrageous at the time, and many people predicted disaster. But instead he sold more cars than ever when he enabled his own workforce to become customers. He's on record saying that raising wages, was the best cost cutting idea he ever had...

“The owner, the employees, and the buying public are all one and the same, and unless an industry can so manage itself as to keep wages high and prices low it destroys itself, for otherwise it limits the number of its customers. One’s own employees ought to be one’s own best customers.”

Asterios wrote:

 Smacks wrote:

Raising the minimum wage being bad for small business is nonsense. And even if it were, why should business have priority anyway? Are we all supposed to live in poverty, just so a few business owners have a handy source of cheap labour they can exploit? Ridiculous!

so the person running a small store doesn't have a right to support his family? but is being muscled into paying his/her employees more then the owner makes?

Rosebuddy wrote:

Asterios wrote:

 Smacks wrote:

Raising the minimum wage being bad for small business is nonsense. And even if it were, why should business have priority anyway? Are we all supposed to live in poverty, just so a few business owners have a handy source of cheap labour they can exploit? Ridiculous!

so the person running a small store doesn't have a right to support his family? but is being muscled into paying his/her employees more then the owner makes?

If your business model hinges on not paying a living wage to your employees then *shrug*


and your problems are with the more fundamental question of why the hell we as individuals must eke out a living as best we can by ourselves when that is complete madness, anyway.

Asterios wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:
If your business model hinges on not paying a living wage to your employees then *shrug*


and your problems are with the more fundamental question of why the hell we as individuals must eke out a living as best we can by ourselves when that is complete madness, anyway.

oh then all small businesses might as well fire their employees then since they cannot afford a minimum wage.

Asterios wrote:
tell me how will that small business stay in business when they are losing money, my friend Scott thought he would be able to keep his store open for another year or two, but for the past 3 months he has lost money and will close his store down within the week, why? because he had to increase the minimum wage to his 32 workers, and his own costs of materials and such went up, when he tried adjusting his prices to fit accordingly he lost business, for the past 3 months he has been working for free with no money coming in, he has gone thru his reserves and savings, if he doesn't close his store he will be homeless, now he has to look for work, his business has been around for 27 years.

 Smacks wrote:

If you want to know why small shops are going out of business, I would point the finger at supermarkets.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The article says the CEO Easterbrook says the minimum wage is not a problem.

Asterios wrote:
also McDonalds will be reducing operations:

Asterios wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The article says the CEO Easterbrook says the minimum wage is not a problem.

didn't say it was, just on a side note.

The French government and unions have reached stalemate over a new labour law so it's protest time again on the streets of Paris, and politics is the conversation du jour while shopping or over lunch, writes Joanna Robertson.
Josiane Bertrand has a small family business - a neighbourhood charcuterie selling sausage, poached pigs' trotters, pate and jellied pig snouts. Her ham, she says, is the best in Paris and her queue of customers is long.
Despite the ceaseless rain outside - among all its other woes, France is now flooding - it's a convivial crowd waiting to be served, and the animated conversation is all about strikes.
If the opinion pages of Le Monde are to be believed, the charcuterie queue is a pretty accurate reflection of the mood of the country. Split, roughly half and half, between those for the Work Bill and those against.

Philippe's 28. He's landed what most French would regard as a dream job. He's a fonctionnaire working in local government. A fonctionnaire is an employee of the French state in almost any form of public administration and service.
It's a job for life - with solid pay and conditions, fixed working hours, a good pension, generous holidays. So, what many young French people aspire to is not to change the world - explore, create, set-up alone - but, with self-employment difficult and taxes punitive, they dream of becoming steadily employed bureaucrats.
Philippe knows he's lucky. And he's against any change. "I'm happy," he says. "I know exactly where I am and where I'll be in 40 years' time, with a good pension."
Eleonore, who has four children, two of them dancing around the shop as they wait, is in her early 40s. As a secondary school teacher she has also got a job for life and generous state benefits. But, unlike Philippe, she's all for change. "It can't go on like this. For every person like me, there are 20 or more with no hope at all," she says.
A quarter of all French people under 25, many of them well-qualified, have no work. A large number of those are from immigrant families, making their chances of employment even slimmer. These are the kind of people who voted Francois Hollande into the presidency in 2012, with his pledge to end the country's employment troubles.

Now he's made a new promise, putting his own political career on the line - he's not running for re-election next spring unless he cuts unemployment. A bold move for a president with an approval rating of only 14% in a country riven by industrial disputes.

Along with his prime minister, Manuel Valls, and Pierre Gattoz - known as the "boss of bosses", president of Medef, the largest federation of employers in France - Hollande stands against the combined power of the country's two biggest unions.
The proposed Work Bill runs to over 500 pages. It aims to simplify and liberalise the French Work Code which, at 3,689 pages, is a vast labyrinth beset with perils for employers.
The unions won't even consider negotiations until the bill is removed from parliament. The president and his allies refuse to change a word of it. "It's a good law, good for France," says Hollande. The result? Total stalemate. An ongoing siege.
Just after one o'clock on the glassed-in terrace of a popular restaurant on the Boulevard Montparnasse, and everything begins to go quiet. The traffic disappears from the street. Cordons of riot police move in, three columns deep, flanked by armoured vans. There's a whirr of helicopters overhead.


In the distance, a gathering roar and blare - the protesters. The noise becomes deafening. The riot police take up positions. Frederique, the waiter, temporarily locks the doors - and those having lunch find themselves exhibits in a kind of transparent, gastronomic showcase along with various grilled fish, bottles of wine and assorted desserts.
Looking in from the outside, hundreds of protesters passing down the boulevard, some marching, others ambling, a few dancing to music booming from the accompanying floats.
Looking out from the inside, the lunchers. The lunchers comment on the demonstrators, the demonstrators wave cheerily at the lunchers. There's general resigned, amused talk amid the eating - "Here we go again," and "Where will this round end?" And self-deprecating comments such as, "We French do love to demonstrate…"
Then it all subsides, passes on, the noise, the marchers, the red balloons and pounding music, leaving a trailing wake of litter. Frederique unlocks the doors. The conversation leaves the political, returns to the personal.
Similar reforms have already been implemented in Italy and Spain. Germany did so long ago - its unemployment, at 5%, is less than half that of France, which according to some commentators here now stands alone as the last bastion of 20th Century-style socialism in Europe.

Police fire teargas, water cannon during Paris labor law protest

Gangs of masked youths hurled stones and makeshift firebombs at riot police on Tuesday as tens of thousands of people marched through Paris in protest over a planned change of labor laws that would make hiring and firing easier.

Police used dozens of rounds of teargas and water cannon to disperse highly mobile groups of mostly black-clad youths. The Paris police department reported 58 arrests, including many foreigners, with 24 police and 17 protesters injured.

The clashes have piled additional pressure on a police force struggling to maintain security during the month-long Euro soccer tournament. France also remains on maximum alert after Islamist attacks last November killed 130 people. Late on Monday a policeman and his wife were slain at their home by what authorities said was an Islamist-inspired man wielding a knife.

The hardline CGT labor union had called for a large turnout in Tuesday's protest march to demonstrate that opposition to the labor reform remains strong despite waning turnout at rallies and strikes. Its call appeared to have been heeded.

Police put the turnout at 75,000-80,000 in Paris alone, roughly three times more than a previous highpoint. Unions, whose figures always substantially exceed police estimates, put the tally at up to 1.3 million.

"This is not the end," CGT leader Philippe Martinez said. "The struggle is far from over."

Backed by smaller unions in a campaign of strikes and protests, the CGT is sparring for pole position with another large union, the CFDT, which backs a reform which would also further devolve the setting of pay and working conditions to company level.

The police department condemned the fresh spate of violence, and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve denounced rioters who among other things, he said, vandalized a hospital which was tending to the three-year-old child of the slain policeman.

On many previous occasions, gangs of what the government and police have described as ultra-violent youths have engaged in running battles with law enforcement officers, ransacking shoptfronts and street furniture.

In tandem with Tuesday's protest, workers stopped work at the state-owned SNCF rail company, which said disruption was far less than at the outset of a rolling strike two weeks ago or on previous occasions this year.

Ninety percent of high-speed connections were operating and other services were working at about 70 percent, the SNCF said.

President Francois Hollande's Socialist government has said it will not withdraw the labor reform, though it has already been watered down. It forced it through the lower house of parliament by decree last month and aims to make it law by July.

The CGT and the smaller Force Ouvriere as well as student unions say the reform will lower standards of labor protection.

The government and the large CFDT union argue the contrary, saying it will help tackle a jobless rate of 10 percent and also develop labor representation at grassroots level.

 whembly wrote:
Is it still Summertime?

Looks like it:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-politics-protests-idUSKCN0Z014E

Police fire teargas, water cannon during Paris labor law protest

Gangs of masked youths hurled stones and makeshift firebombs at riot police on Tuesday as tens of thousands of people marched through Paris in protest over a planned change of labor laws that would make hiring and firing easier.

Police used dozens of rounds of teargas and water cannon to disperse highly mobile groups of mostly black-clad youths. The Paris police department reported 58 arrests, including many foreigners, with 24 police and 17 protesters injured.

The clashes have piled additional pressure on a police force struggling to maintain security during the month-long Euro soccer tournament. France also remains on maximum alert after Islamist attacks last November killed 130 people. Late on Monday a policeman and his wife were slain at their home by what authorities said was an Islamist-inspired man wielding a knife.

The hardline CGT labor union had called for a large turnout in Tuesday's protest march to demonstrate that opposition to the labor reform remains strong despite waning turnout at rallies and strikes. Its call appeared to have been heeded.

Police put the turnout at 75,000-80,000 in Paris alone, roughly three times more than a previous highpoint. Unions, whose figures always substantially exceed police estimates, put the tally at up to 1.3 million.

"This is not the end," CGT leader Philippe Martinez said. "The struggle is far from over."

Backed by smaller unions in a campaign of strikes and protests, the CGT is sparring for pole position with another large union, the CFDT, which backs a reform which would also further devolve the setting of pay and working conditions to company level.

The police department condemned the fresh spate of violence, and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve denounced rioters who among other things, he said, vandalized a hospital which was tending to the three-year-old child of the slain policeman.

On many previous occasions, gangs of what the government and police have described as ultra-violent youths have engaged in running battles with law enforcement officers, ransacking shoptfronts and street furniture.

In tandem with Tuesday's protest, workers stopped work at the state-owned SNCF rail company, which said disruption was far less than at the outset of a rolling strike two weeks ago or on previous occasions this year.

Ninety percent of high-speed connections were operating and other services were working at about 70 percent, the SNCF said.

President Francois Hollande's Socialist government has said it will not withdraw the labor reform, though it has already been watered down. It forced it through the lower house of parliament by decree last month and aims to make it law by July.

The CGT and the smaller Force Ouvriere as well as student unions say the reform will lower standards of labor protection.

The government and the large CFDT union argue the contrary, saying it will help tackle a jobless rate of 10 percent and also develop labor representation at grassroots level.