"Happy as God in France.”

Many of us who lived in France learned to appreciate that German saying. There was a constant sense in Paris, my temporary home, of being in a privileged place where joy seemed always accessible. Given that good fortune, we who experienced it are mystified by the negative attitude of Americans toward the French and their enviable way of life. The thought recurs especially on days like this when France is disrupted by a nationwide work stoppage. Indeed, it happens nearly every time the U.S. news media report on political unrest involving French workers, students, immigrants, etc. Case in point: reports published last week when, as a prelude to today, students led union-supported protests against a law that would provide less security but more job opportunity for France’s young people. The labor-law furor came just a few months after immigrant young from poor suburbs triggered an outbreak of car-burning in many French cities.

A New York Times story last week expressed a general American perspective on the recurring unrest. It connected the latest economy-related crisis to France’s “rigid social-welfare system”. The country’s social programs, the article said, have a “stranglehold” on the French people. That analysis, which I do not dispute, serves an unfortunate purpose: to reinforce our reflexive disdain for countries dedicated to social protection financed by heavy taxation.

No one denies the challenge facing the French system. The near-ironclad job security it confers on workers is only the most topical of many programs it would like to scale back.. Others soon could include its excellent-but-expensive government-supported education and health care programs, and its establishment of a 35-hour work week with five to six weeks of annual vacation plus 12 paid holidays. In a globally competitive market, France is clearly having a hellish time maintaining such addictive entitlements.. “Les americains travaillent,” a French friend said to me in Paris not long ago, “les francais s’amusent.” Loosely translated, he was telling me what I already knew: that the French have a tenacious liking for their leisure. .

Under the circumstances, it is remarkable that the French people have so far successfully resisted change, refusing to let their country adopt the American model of market capitalism. Where mobilizing mass protests in the U.S. has been problematic over the last few years – even with an unpopular war – the French seem ready and eager to take to the streets by the hundreds of thousands at the slightest threat to their lifestyle. The conventional explanation is the traditional strength of their public unions, particularly in the transportation sector. Equally relevant to popular resistance is a related tradition virtually unknown in the U.S: that of worker solidarity. The principle of national solidarite – call it “one for all and all for one” - is proclaimed in the first article of the French Code of Social Security. Every manifestation is a homage to that principle.

All this being so, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin surely knew months ago when he pledged to do whatever it would take to protect French industry that he was putting his political future at risk. France’s workers, including its middle- as well as lower-income wage-earners, want more than job security. They are seeking to head off a shift in governmental priority that would devalue the role of employees in deference to that of stockholders and managers. It is what they see happening in the U.S. And, given our industry-wide layoffs, buybacks and pension rollbacks, who can blame them for that perception?

But what of our unsympathetic response to French popular rejection of changes economists say are “inevitable”? Shouldn’t the great majority of us who are jobholders be applauding this defiance of the conventional wisdom? Shouldn’t we be cheering this massive effort to maintain the respected place of the employee in the corporate order?

Sure, it is hard for us to relate to a lifestyle dedicated more to free time and pleasurable pursuits than to the work ethic. But does it make sense to let our mistrust of that approach prompt us to disown it, given that most of us are on the same middle-class team? And how can we dismiss the dissident French after the way they shocked the world two years ago? Remember, it was France that then rejected a European Union treaty pushing market economics another seemingly inevitable step. Some believe the country’s current popular resistance could stall the anti-employee trend again.

The best possible result has been suggested by a respected Paris-based observer, American author and journalist William Pfaff. He sees a real chance that the French protesters will provide the impetus for a rethinking of the inevitable. Their intransigence could lead to creation of a “new…humane model” by which France – and perhaps even the U.S. - can better come to terms with the global economy.

The hopeful prospect should merit our sympathy, if not for market-related reasons, then because it’s reassuring to us as travelers. How nice to think a tourist paradise will remain much the same. That should be good news for God, too.

John Richard Starkey, a former columnist and editor for the Paris-based Herald Tribune, is a founding partner of Perfect Pitch Communications, a Manhattan-based political consultancy.

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