French prepare to go to the polls

On Wednesday around 19 million French will have the chance to vote.

Oh not another election in France, you may well be screaming.

Sorry folks, afraid so. Following last year's presidential and parliamentary election here, and then the two rounds of local elections in March this year, the French are being called to the ballot box once again.

Around 19 million of them to be precise.

Hang about. You might be wondering how come so few. After all in a country of around 64 million people, surely there are more registered voters than that.

And you would be right in terms of the other national elections, for which there are in fact just over 44 million registered voters.

Furthermore astute France-watchers (oh come on there has to be at least one out there) will have noticed that tomorrow's election falls on a weekday, rather than on a Sunday as is traditional in this country.

Ah, well here's the short answer.

This time around it's a national election for sure, but of quite a different sort - namely for the country's prud'hommes.

If you've just had to reach for the dictionary - here's a simple explanation which will give you (hopefully ) a much clearer understanding of what they do and why they're important.

They're the people who serve on France's 210 private sector joint industrial tribunals.

There are 14,512 elected prud'hommes serving for five years up and down the country on 210 tribunals, and their job is to resolve industrial - or more accurately perhaps, employment - disputes between employer and employee.

Of the 200,000 or so cases the tribunals hear each year, around 50 per cent concern alleged unfair dismissal and compensation claims, with another 40 per cent involving overtime and bonus disputes.

In around 70 per cent of cases, the tribunal rules in favour of the employee.

Wednesday's vote is open to all private sector employees as well as those from state-run commercial companies such as SNCF (railways) and EDF (electricity).

The government has been criticised in the run-up to the election, in particular by Laurence Parisot, the president of MEDEF (Mouvement des Entreprises de France or Movement of the French Enterprises).

She's on record as having recently called the government's approach and to the organisation of the vote "a shambles".

Trade unions meanwhile, have been campaigning heavily among private sector employees.

For Bernard Thibault, the general secretary of the Confédération générale du travail (General Confederation of Labour, CGT) the largest of France's five main trade unions, Wednesday's vote is also a clear test of government employment policy.

"We want there to be true national consultation and this is a chance to send a clear message to the government as to employees' expectations in this period of (economic) crisis,"he said.

Even though government and trades unions agree that the role of the prud'hommes is a vital one, there has been a marked decrease in participation among those eligible to vote in recent elections. In 1979, turnout was at 63.2 per cent but last time around (2002) only 32.7 per cent voted.

The signs are that Wednesday's vote will be follow a similar pattern with a poll published on Tuesday revealing that 70 per cent of those surveyed saying they would abstain, vote blank or spoil their ballot papers.

"That's the paradox of the prud'hommes," Xavier Bertrand, the minister of employment is reported as saying in the national daily Le Figaro.

"If 90 per cent of those involved in the private sector agree that they (the tribunals) serve a function and are indispensable, only 30 per cent of those eligible actually vote."