Paris: After 30 years of fraught attempts to make its labour market more flexible, the French government has announced sweeping changes with the potential to radically shift the balance of power from workers to employers. 

The step was the first of several that President Emmanuel Macron and his government are planning to galvanise the French economy. It was cheered in European capitals, where an invigorated France is considered critical to the survival of a European Union that is finally showing signs of revival after a lost decade.

Economists in France and across Europe expressed optimism about the new law, however, suggesting that Macron had seized the moment just after his election, when the country might be more receptive to what was being characterised as a revolutionary change.

"The reform of the labour market is a reform of profound transformation," Mr Macron told the weekly Le Point in a wide-ranging interview, adding that it had to be "ambitious and efficient enough to continue to lower mass unemployment."

But some analysts fear the government is going too far, giving employers too much of an upper hand and greatly eroding the power of unions, prompting at least one of them to promise a nationwide strike.

Macron's changes make it easier to hire and fire workers and allow some workplace issues to be negotiated at the company level, rather than with national unions, in hopes of stimulating both growth and job creation. The government focused especially on businesses with fewer than 50 employees - the majority of French businesses - which have complained about excessive red tape and regulations.

Not everyone saw the changes as positive ones.

"Macron has amplified something that has been in the air for a bit: to move labour negotiations closer to the ground," said Michel Pigenet, a historian of work and social movements at the Sorbonne, one of France's most prestigious universities.

"But closer to the ground, it's a fact that unions are weaker," he said. "Thus the negotiation is certainly going to become less balanced."

Leaders of one major union, General Confederation of Labour, or CGT, said the changes were as bad as they expected, and they would go ahead with a national strike on September 12.

More moderate unions were more cautious, accepting some of the government's compromises, but worrying about other provisions.

Two larger unions, the CFDT and Force Ouvriere, have announced that although they were not completely satisfied with the changes, they would not take part in the protest.

Parliament now has about five months to decide whether to ratify the changes. If lawmakers reject the new labour measures, they will remain in effect, but with an inferior status that means they can be overturned by Parliament at a later date.

New York Times