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I think the issue is not about applying DEI in French companies, nor it exist. The problem is a foreigner leader telling an independent country how he should manage his companies, or at least, to foreign companies how they should hire people. You can't be a libertarian from one side and tell such things... until you want to fire every human and make every company in the world running with Musk AI and robots ...
Government so small it can fit inside your office.
The interesting part:
France has not traditionally been a place where DEI programmes have taken root because of legal limitations on the collection of racial and ethnic data. Employers are not allowed to factor people’s origins into hiring or promotion decisions.
In France, you cannot really base any official decision on the origin of someone, even just using the concept of race is considered racist and against the law. This is due to the trauma of Vichy's regime Nazi collaboration but also the popularization of the idea that there is no scientific evidence for human races in the current human population by the famous anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss.
Didn't he study jeans?
That's how he figured out the race thing. Jeans look equally good on all people no matter color or origin!
Nono, he was an anthropologist, he studied genes
Like Wilder and Hackman?
That was his brother, Jimmy “Beans” Levi-Strauss
We still have DEI policies focusing on gender, disability and on socio-economic background (which does correlate with ethnicity in a lot of places). Of course in a lot of companies it's mostly for show, but in some it's done with a sincere will and has real effects.
It may correlate with ethnicity, but the cases when it doesn't are important too and it makes it a better condition. It's also better at countering some far right arguments against help programs.
My parents fled a socialist country many decades ago. I grew up listening to my father drone on and on about how bad Socialism is. He still doesn’t understand that there's a difference between socialism and totalitarianism, but following political developments of the last decade or so I am often reminded of his sermons.
One detail was: what happens when you hire people not based on qualifications but loyalty. You get stupid people in positions of power, happy to wield it for its own sake. Often with a penchant for cruelty and a vague feeling of revenge (against “the bourgeousie” then, against “woke globalists” now). And it always ends the same: you have to dilute milk with water and lie about it. This is where the US are headed now, folks. Stalinism, the burgeoning 3rd Reich, take your pick.
My dad grew up in a communist country, and I know exactly what you mean.
I'm incredibly lucky that we have a kind of mutual intellectual respect, where we fact-check each other a lot and are both willing to change our minds about stuff. Consequently, I've managed to explain the differences between totalitarianism, communism, and fascism (had to explain why horseshoe theory isn't a thing).
He thought I was being hyperbolic about the US' slow descent into fascism in 2017, as I ran through the fascist identification checklist. As a victim of communism, he naturally tried to make excuses for Trump. That ended the first week of his second term, and we're having some close calls with a similar candidate here.
We have too much emotional baggage to have regular discussions but it was kinda cool to be on the same side during Covid, pro Ukraine and against Putin and Trump. Although he too thought me hyperbolic when I compared Trump's first weeks in office to Hitler's first weeks in office. Maybe he has changed his mind by now.
France replies to trump with "we wave our genitalia in your general direction."
Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?
Which means what Jimmy? What the fuck does this mean!?!!?
I'm remembering what always happens when US companies try to run US labour practices in Europe.
It's hilarious
"If you don't play by our rules you can't do business with us!"
They just keep shooting themselves in both feet. As if a tariff war wasn't enough.
To be fair
"If you don't play by our rules you can't do business with us!"
Is how our European market works as well right?
Yeah, but we don’t try to apply our rules in their country. We demand they apply our rules in our jurisdiction.
They want to sell chlorinated chicken breasts in the US? No problem, but we don’t want that shit here.
yeah and we don't scrub off the protective film from our eggs either.
It could be argued, I guess?
But to impose arbitrary (and contrary to democracy itself) rules overnight and expect everyone to follow suit instead of negotiating a solution? No fucking way.
Maybe I should have put it differently:
“If you don’t run your business by our fascist rules right now you can’t do business with us!”
Well the difference is that EU tries to impose fair rules that will benefit (or hurt, as is too often the case) everyone equally, while Trump wants to impose unfair rules that only benefit US corporations and himself.
No, the EU has a habit of protectionism disguised as legitimate interest. I recall a case study from when I was in high school, where the EU set the safety limits on a certain contaminant in a product—peanuts, I think it was—way, way stricter than any evidentiary basis, because EU farms could meet the restriction, but African or South American farms could not.
It's hardly comparable to anything Trump is doing, but it's worth mentioning, since you did claim EU laws are all about affecting everyone equally.
They also paid for a study on how digital piracy affects profits and then buried it when the result showed that it didn't have a negative impact.
The EU cares about the EU and its wealth, not its citizens. It's still a big step up over the land of the free-to-sell-its-citizens-wellbeing-to-the-corporations, though.
Lmao inagine fucking yourself this hard. That means all global suppliers to the US will have to stop dealing with them. They will run out of brains and resources so fucking fast.
According to Les Échos, the letter concluded: “If you do not agree to sign this document, we would be grateful if you could kindly provide us with detailed reasons, which we will forward to our legal department.”
God this is so childish. This just isn't how grown ups go about disagreeing about things.
The French government will have to intervene because I don't think corporations are gonna be willing to put up a fight on their own.
European governments and courts have a long history of laughing at US companies attempting to apply US labour laws on European soil. I'm sure they'll cope.
I’ll kindly provide you detailed reasons to suck my balls!