“A law working its way through [the French] parliament would grant amnesty to workers who have ransacked their company’s offices or threatened their bosses during a labor dispute.” [USA Today via Jon Hyman]
Posts Tagged ‘France’
Labor and employment roundup
- Seventh Circuit upholds Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s public sector labor law reform [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]
- In theory, California workers fired for cause aren’t entitled to unemployment compensation. In practice… [Coyote]
- Comstockery meets occupational licensure: how New York’s Cabaret Law tripped up Billie Holiday [Bryan Caplan]
- New Jersey lawmakers move to cut nonunion workers out of Hurricane Sandy recovery jobs [Jersey Journal]
- Cheer up, plaintiff’s bar, you’re doing very well these days out of FLSA wage-and-hour actions [Max Kennerly]
- Back to “spiking”: “CalPERS planning to gut a key cost-control provision of new pension law” [Daniel Borenstein, Contra Costa Times] When government negotiates with public sector unions over pay, the process should be transparent to taxpayers and the public [Nick Dranias, Goldwater Institute]
- Sacre bleu! Labor law reform reaches France [NYT]
Aux armes, old Citroëns!
Governments forcing out private editors: it’d never happen here. Right?
I’ve expanded into a longer Cato post my item about how (according to the New York Times) incoming French president François Hollande demanded and got the dismissal of the editor of Le Figaro, the leading opposition (conservative) newspaper. If you think such things would never happen in this country, you might want to catch up on a couple of stories from Chicago and Boston. The post is here.
P.S. They’re still fighting in Washington over media cross-ownership rules.
Do French administrations even pretend to observe the niceties?
Incoming Socialist president François Hollande demanded and received the dismissal of the editor of Le Figaro, the country’s top conservative newspaper, whose owners have military-contracting interests and must cultivate the goodwill of the state. [Scott Sayare, New York Times]
Free speech roundup
- Already firebombed once: “Satirical French Magazine Publishes Caricatures Of Mohammed, White House Rebukes.” [Mediaite] More calls for punishing makers of anti-Muslim YouTube video for supposed incitement [Ann Althouse on Sarah Chayes, earlier here and here; also, the late Christopher Hitchens on “fire in a crowded theater” arguments] “The people who instigate these protests seek a very particular goal: an extension of Egyptian and Pakistani style blasphemy laws into the West.” [David Frum]
- “$60,000 Verdict for Blogging the Truth About A Person Intending to Get Him Fired – Reversed” [Volokh]
- Judge closes probe of opinion-maker influence in Google-Oracle battle [The Recorder, earlier]
- Weight-loss device promoter files, then drops suit against Public Citizen, consumerist website Fair Warning [Paul Alan Levy, Fair Warning]
- “How Ag Gag Laws Suppress Free Speech and the Marketplace of Ideas” [Baylen Linnekin, earlier here, etc.]
- Big government Republicans in charge: “GOP Platform Changed To Now Target All Forms Of Pornography” [Andrew Kirell, Mediaite; Volokh]
- Missouri activist starts website criticizing local cops and soon the department’s halls display what looks very much like a “Wanted” poster of him [Eapen Thampy, Agitator]
Food roundup
- Prop 37: Oakland Tribune thumbs down [editorial] “Natural” language a flashpoint [Glenn Lammi, WLF] Earlier here, here;
- “Danish government may scrap its ‘fat tax’ after only one year because it simply doesn’t work” [Mark J. Perry, AEIdeas]
- “Mouse in Mountain Dew saga comes to an end” [Madison County Record, earlier]
- Food safety and local producers: “FDA Rules Won’t Work, Will Harm Small Farmers” [Ryan Young, CEI] “How Farmers’ Markets Dodged a Regulatory Bullet in Pennsylvania” [Baylen Linnekin, Reason]
- “On the roads, on the cheese board… many Europeans now have more freedom than Americans.” [Mark Steyn]
- Mayor Bloomberg extends his healthy-beverage solicitude to the youngest consumers [Steve Chapman]
- In France, raw milk in vending machines [Mark Perry] FDA ban on interstate shipment of raw milk dates back to lawsuit by Public Citizen’s Sidney Wolfe [Linnekin]
“French Demand Compensation for Plantagenet Murder”
The French town of Angers might be 500 or so years too late, though. It asks a bit hopefully for the British crown jewels as compensation. [Lowering the Bar]
“Why France Has So Many 49-Employee Companies”
Travails of French employers under the Code du Travail — though it’s not as if America doesn’t have plenty of firms that follow the same strategy of keeping head counts below a certain regulatory-trigger threshold. [Business Week]
Labor and employment roundup
- Failure to accommodate employee’s religious belief forbidding hair-cutting results in $27K payout by Taco Bell operator [EEOC, North Carolina]
- There’s a reason they call it Government Motors: nonunion GM assembly workers get shaft [Fountain]
- Mayor Bloomberg refreshingly sane on “living wage,” though not alas rent control [Heather Mac Donald, Secular Right]
- “The cost of labor isn’t the main problem, it’s the rigidities,” says French CEO [Bloomberg]
- Maryland governor signs bill softening “workplace fraud” law that bedevils firms that use independent contractors [H.B. 1364, earlier]
- Watch out for ghastly, mislabeled “Paycheck Fairness Act,” they’re trying to bring it back [Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Examiner, earlier]
- “The most infuriating part of this is that it takes five years of litigation to fire a badly behaved police officer” [Josh Barro, Masnick/TechDirt, on cop’s harassment of skateboarder; Baltimore Sun (police union calls officer’s firing “outrageous.”)]