In France, systematized revolt

In its choreographed and time-honed fashion, much of France went on strike Tuesday.

A predetermined number of buses, subways, and trains did not run. Schools were ostensibly open, although teachers in certain grades had warned parents beforehand that they would skip class. In scores of cities and towns, about 1 million people marched peacefully - with only scattered post-march clashes between youths and police. No one expected to have mail delivered and, for the most part, they were right.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, whose jobs plan for young people was the target of the nationwide protest, was already planning for the morning-after. He said he was open to discussing the details, but not the legitimacy, of his plan, and invited student and union leaders to meet when everyone goes back to work on Wednesday.

Indeed, for all its clamor and disruption, the latest political confrontation in France has a certain predictability to it.

Over the past 15 years, strikes and street demonstrations have become an integral part of the way public policy is made or, as is often the case, unmade, in a country that simultaneously fears and yearns for change.

With presidential elections scheduled for next year, the clash over the new labor contract has taken on the aspect of a dress rehearsal for the battles to come between Mr. Villepin, a potential candidate, and his rivals on the left and right wings of French politics.

But the latest eruption of public protest also has many people worried that politicians have lulled themselves into viewing such demonstrations as simply a form of popular referendum, especially after the surprise French rebellion against the European Constitution and the riots by suburban youth last year.

"Demonstrations are no longer even seen by the government as a sign of open crisis," says Danielle Tartakowski, a historian and professor at the University of Paris.

The prime minister, she adds, is flirting with danger. "If you make the demonstrations a quasi-norm of political life for resolving disputes," Mrs. Tartakowski says, "you can create a very strong destabilization of society and a strong sentiment of revolt."

The proposal that Villepin has been defending would add a new type of labor contract to the array of regulations that already govern relations between employers and employees.

The "first-employment" contract (CPE), as it is called, would permit companies to hire young people on the basis of a two-year probationary period with the freedom to fire them without cause at any time.

The prime minister described it as a reform to help reduce the 23 percent jobless rate among young people, but student groups have called it a contract of guaranteed insecurity for a single class of French worker.

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