French students flash humour amid grim job outlook

PARIS, Mar 20 (Reuters) French students haven't lost their anarchic sense of humour after all.

The grim slogans of last week's protest marches, marked by widespread concern about youth unemployment over 20 per cent, made the students look like a bland imitation of the exuberant radicals who shocked the country back in 1968.

Old 68ers marching with their teenage and 20-something children in a protest against a new youth job law on Saturday wistfully recalled how they demonstrated not for a minimum-wage job but for sexual freedom and utopian political dreams.

But flashes of the old spirit came back overnight as students spraypainted brash multi-coloured graffiti around the Sorbonne, the Latin Quarter university that stood as a magnet for protest both four decades ago and now.

''If everybody disobeys, nobody can give orders!'' read one slogan freshly scrawled on a wall across the Boulevard Saint Michel from the Sorbonne.

''Work is the gulag with air conditioning,'' another said, referring to Soviet forced labour camps.

Parisians strolling yesterday morning delighted in the splash of colour and imagination after days of hearing angry students compare themselves to Kleenex tissues that employers could use once and throw away.

''Look at all the colours!'' one local resident giggled, pointing to gaudy purple letters spelling out ''Cocktail -- Cobblestone -- Riot.'' ''Police everywhere, justice nowhere,'' read another vivid slogan on the walls. ''Screw the police.'' ''Why work? Destroying keeps you young,'' read one probably scrawled there by the small minority of violent rioters the French call ''les casseurs'' (the breakers).

SQUEEZED LEMONS The graffiti came as a small but welcome relief from glum protests demanding the government withdraw a new youth jobs law that loosens up job protection by allowing bosses to fire workers under 26 more easily.

Students in the western city of Rennes donned plastic garbage bags with ''I am disposable'' signs for their march.

''We're tired of being squeezed lemons,'' read a poster at the main protest rally in Paris.

Middle-aged marchers reminiscing about their student days sounded like messengers from another planet.

''Back then, there was no unemployment, it was a situation of abundance'' Maire-Paule Chavanat, 55, said during the Paris march. ''The protests were about liberties and sexual freedom.

''Today, the protests emerge out of a situation of social precariousness,'' she said, using the buzzword the French employ to describe both unemployment and insecure jobs.

But even in the face of 20 per cent youth unemployment that the students fear will get worse, the old spirit broke through.

''We are winning!'' announced one slogan -- in English -- amid the sudden splash of pre-spring colour.

Reuters KD VP1025