Has the conservative French employers' association begun imitating the leftist trade unions it detests? You could be forgiven for thinking so. A year ago, the National Council of French Employers (CNPF) changed its name to the Movement of French Enterprises (MEDEF).
The word Patronat in the old name was redolent of greed and money, while "movement" was vaguely revolutionary. The MEDEF wanted to shed its image of representing big French corporations, so its new leader, Mr Ernest Antoine Seilliere began courting small businesses, which his aides describe in unwittingly leftist tones as La Base.
So perhaps it was only a matter of time before the new MEDEF indulged in the most sacred ritual of the French left, a demonstration. Et voila c'est fait. This afternoon for the first time in 17 years and only the second time in its history, the employers' association will gather at the Porte de Versailles to protest against the second law on the 35-hour working week, known as the Loi Aubry after the employment minister, Ms Martine Aubry. The demonstration is timed to precede the opening of the parliamentary debate tomorrow. The first law set a January 2000 deadline for all businesses with more than 20 employees to move to the 35-hour week. The second law addresses overtime, paying workers for coffee breaks, the minimum wage and the financing of the measure.
French business is categorically opposed to the 35-hour week, which was a key campaign promise in the 1997 parliamentary election campaign. "France is the only country in the world which has imposed by law a reduction to 35 hours," a one-page open letter to Ms Aubry signed by 200,000 French businessmen begins. The law will increase labour costs and will not create jobs, it says, ending with a veiled but oft-repeated threat to pick up their marbles and go home - or abroad. "There is no growth and no employment when entrepreneurs are prevented from taking initiatives."
While other Europeans are investing in business, French management is forced to finance more free time for workers, they moan at MEDEF. How can France compete in such a situation? Nonsense, the socialists respond. French businesses are enjoying record profits, including Mr Seilliere's holding company CGIP, which has FFr 28 billion (€4.3 billion) in assets and just reported FFr 865 million (€132 million) in first-term profits.
The MEDEF will consider today's protest a failure if fewer than 10,000 businessmen show up. Special buses and trains have been chartered to ferry bosses from the depths of the provinces. Lest one take the MEDEF's mimicry of the left too seriously, a spokes woman insists: "This is a rally not a demonstration. Businessmen do not march in the street. They are responsible people."
The 2 1/2-hour session will begin with testimonials by entrepreneurs about the difficulties the 35-hour week will create for them, followed by a speech from Mr Seilliere. Admiration for the British prime minister is one of Mr Seilliere's favourite themes. "Tony Blair likes business," the spokeswoman says. "He says that what is good for business is good for the country. In France, people don't like business. Success is considered suspect."
Some businessmen admit privately that the Aubry law is a godsend, because it legalises flexible working hours and annualisation for the first time in France. The MEDEF knows the law will pass no matter how much it protests, but it feels it is important to set down a marker. Despite its moaning, there is merit to the MEDEF's argument that the Aubry Law - by one count the 8000th regulating labour in France - is a horrendously complex edifice of subsidies that takes with one hand what it gives back with the other.
The government will pay businesses FFr 110 billion (£116.8 billion) to implement the law - FFr 45 billion (£6.9 billion) of this will come from an exoneration on social charges for workers earning up to 1.8 times the minimum wage. Ironically, the left-wing government has handed management a huge incentive to keep workers at low-wage levels.
The other FFr 65 billion (£9.9 billion) in new business subsidies is to come from tobacco taxes an "eco-tax" on polluting industries and the Social Contribution on Profits (CSB), a new tax on companies with more than Ffr 50 million in turnover and a tax on overtime work. Ms Aubry wants to collect the shortfall from Unedic, the tri-partite government, employers and trade union organisation that issues unemployment cheques. Unedic says no.
Above all, the dispute over the 35-hour working week is a reminder that France has the worst government-business-union relations in Europe. Mr Seilliere and Ms Aubry have met privately only once in the nearly two years that he has headed the employers' association.
It is as if French society were locked into an elaborate theatre where management plays the role of patriarchal, baronial bosses - Mr Seilliere is even a real-life baron. French workers seem to feel obliged to eternally act out Zola's Germinal, while the government cannot resist intervening.
