Comment: let's take it from the end.

(4) The cupboard solution is one that is known pretty much everywhere, not just in France, and all it adds to this article is a closing "humoristic" note.

(3) Reaching an agreement over the departure of an employee, which may include payment of a sum of money, is also a practice not specific to France. How much do American CEOs get in their "severance package" when they screw up and have to go?

More seriously, this section mixes up obligations which are legal and contractual, with optional offers of money. Legally, severance pay is due if the employee has been employed more than two years, and the cause for dismissal is not extremely serious, (such as theft, for example). Contractually, the period of notice must be paid even if the employer tells the employee not to come to work during that period (but on this point, does no one in other countries, including the US, have a contract stipulating a notice period of one, two, three months, sometimes more?) What may be optional in some cases is that an employer makes an offer to an employee to reach an agreement over the employee's departure. Again, is that kind of arrangement unknown elsewhere?

(2) PROVE HE DID A BAD, BAD THING That's really skewed and not informative. Put it this way: if an employee does a bad, bad thing, you can fire her/im on the spot and throw them off the premises (and proceed to sue them if you wish, in cases of embezzlement or commercial/technological espionage, for example).

In cases where it's not a bad, bad thing, but just incompetence, poor performance, incapacity to do the job (including for health reasons), refusal to accept changes that were properly discussed in advance, (for example), there is a procedure to be followed in which the problem is discussed and evaluated between employer and employee and, if the problem isn't settled, dismissal follows. Dismissals for causes like this happen all the time.

It's important to note that the article seems to assume the employer needs to go to court to fire someone. This is not so. If the employee decides they consider the dismissal unfair, they are free to take it to court. Then the employer has to show the procedure was properly respected, and the cause was real and serious. Employees win these cases fairly often, but employers do too.

(1) Economic reasons. In cases like a downturn, or a change in specific market conditions, or loss of a contract, etc, you can lay people off, again by following proper procedure since you may have to show this in court (but not necessarily, see above). Large companies have more constraints in this field ("social plans" for big lay-offs).

On severance pay: this is mandatory in dismissals except those for extremely serious causes (bad, bad things). But it is not as colossal as is often made out. The English-language press often talks of "hefty severance" and burdens and suchlike. But the basic mandatory system is :

• no severance pay during years one and two;
  
• thereafter, a small amount per year of employment. I think it's one-twentieth of one month's salary per annum. I'll try and check and confirm that.

So, to sum up: the NYT piece isn't entirely false, but it takes a certain manifest delight in playing on conventional wisdom and received ideas about (ha-ha-ha!!!) the French and hiring/firing. Reality is more complex. France is certainly not America in these matters, but neither is it the caricature shown in the Eng-lang press.

• the unemployment of 22% for the youth really means that 8% of the youth are unemployed, lower than the EU average (where have we heard that before)

• Eurostat indicates that the main indicator to assess the flexibility of a labor market and the mobility of workers is the proportion of workers who have been in their job for less than 3 months. That proportion is 6.7% in France, higher than in the UK and than the 4.9% EU average...

• French companies never stop creating jobs. In 1993, the worst recession year in a long time, they hired 3.6 million people; the number was 4.8 million in 2003, a year with weak growth, and 5.4 million in 2000, a boom year.

The labor market is characterized by large flows--high rates of separations from firms, and high rates of hires by firms. In France for example, 1.5% of all jobs are destroyed each month and roughly as many are created-- interestingly, this is about the same percentage as in the United States. As there are many reasons other than job destruction why a worker may separate from a firm, the flows of workers are typically much higher. In France, they are of the order of 4% per month (Pierre Cahuc and André Zylberberg 2004).

You either fire an employee because you can't afford him (1), or because he doesn't do his job well (2), or because you can't stand the fact that he slept with your daughter (3). (4) is a non-issue, meant to manipulate the reader.

It's for the (3) that the CPE will be felt most ... and why we need to fight against it. As Jérôme pointed out, it's being increasingly resorted to by French companies, so with the CPE it'll all be (3): "I don't like your shoes" ... "You have bad breath" ... "What? You don't like rugby?"

The laws on "licensement," as firing in France is called, are complex enough to fill a book, but in the end there are essentially four ways for an employer to deliver a pink slip.

The French word is "licenciement". The guy decides he needs to put the French word in his article, and he is not even fucking able to find the proper way to spell it?

Sloppy. Incompetent. Tedious.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Employees in the USA are divided into two classes:

   1. at-will employees
   2. just-cause employees

An at-will employee in the USA can be terminated at any time, and for any reason - or no reason at all - and the courts will generally not intervene to protect the ex-employee from allegedly unfair treatment by the employer.

This doctrine even allows for dismissal for morally reprehensible reasons:

An often-quoted statement of at-will employment appears in an old case from Tennessee:

All may dismiss their employees at will, be they many or few, for good cause, for no cause[,] or even for cause morally wrong, without being thereby guilty of legal wrong.

In other words, in an at-will state an employer may fire his accountant for refusing to falsify the books.

The above quotes are taken from the History of At-Will Employment Law in the USA, which is a very lucid explanation of what at-will employment is and why it is bad law.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

This makes the whole thing less costly financial wise (for the company, goes without saying).
If pushed to resignation, the employee is not entitled to any compensation for contract termination, nor severance pay or job seeker's allowance.
Cost savings for the company and for the Sécu. Any better deal ? <s>

When through hell, just keep going. W. Churchill

PUT HIM IN A CUPBOARD AND THROW AWAY THE KEY

...moving them out of the way and leaving them alone in hopes that they eventually quit.

"Compaq acquired Digital in June 1998 but quickly ran into problems. European labor rules and work councils prevented Compaq from reducing staff quickly, and the company faced a number of problems integrating sales forces, said analysts. The company had announced 17,000 layoffs worldwide would result from the merger, as well as facilities consolidation and closings. But the process proceeded more slowly in Europe than other areas and is only now [July 1999] nearing completion."
http://news.com.com/Compaq+still+dogged+by+Digital+transition/2100-1001_3-228056.html

In the U.S. a company can close a non-unionized plant or liquidate a division overnight, with no advance notice to employees and with no requirement for any sort of service award or early retirement. Some local governments require advance notice, but often these do not have to be made public.

That's what employers want everywhere. The question is whether the overall result is better or worse than the more rigid contract approach.