Jeaudi 16 Octobre 2025
The sign on the window of Red Rhino, a popular
barbecue restaurant in central Paris, has been up for a month: “Closed until further notice due to lack
of personnel. “Bus and train service has been cut back in the tourist city of
Lyon amid a dearth(an amount or supply that is not large enough不足，缺乏，缺少) of drivers. In the Loire Valley,
tons of vegetables went unharvested in the summer as thousands of picking jobs
were left unfilled.
Economic activity has fitfully (in a way that often stops and starts and is not regular or
continuous斷斷續續地;一陣陣地;間歇地)revved (to increase the
operating speed of an engine while the vehicle is not moving, usually to warm
it to the correct temperature（使）快速運轉)up again in France and across Europe since the end of COVID-19 lockdowns(an emergency situation in which
people are not allowed to freely enter, leave, or move around in a building or
area because of danger
（建築或地區）因緊急情況而被封鎖了), only to be knocked back
by the effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Even so, employers in numerous
industries remain desperate to hire, with a range of businesses still not
finding the workers needed to operate at capacity.
All of which has prompted (to make something happen)
France, Europe’s second-largest economy, to seek a variety of solutions—all of
them politically combustible(able to burn easily可燃的，易燃的).
President Emmanuel Macron’s government is
proposing a fast-track
(the quickest route to a
successful position（通常充滿競爭的）快速成功之路，迅速晉升之道) legalization for migrants in the country illegally who want to
work in sectors facing staff shortages.
For added measure, the government is moving
to tighten France’s
famously generous unemployment
system, with its lengthy benefits, in a bid to cycle jobless people more quickly back into
the workforce.
The plans have met with resistance from different ends of
the political spectrum. Lawmakers from France’s rising far right say a growing influx of migrants must
be brought under tighter control and that French nationals should be given priority
for jobs. The country’s powerful labor unions are warning that measures to cut
jobless benefits risk pushing the unemployed toward poverty.
For thousands of businesses that form the
backbone of the economy, the
double-barreled (A double-barrelled gun has two barrels (= parts shaped like
tubes).
雙管的) approach has become necessary
to help fix to what appears to be a permanent shift in workplace dynamics since
the pandemic, as European workers in droves (a large group, especially of people, moving towards a
place or doing something together as a group（前往某地的）群體（尤指移動的人群）)switch jobs or decide not to return to strenuous(needing or using a lot of physical or mental effort or energy費力的，費勁的;繁重的;耗費精力的) work that demands early or late
hours on relatively low pay. Over half a million people in France resigned in
the first three months of the year, the highest level in 15 years, France’s
statistics agency reported.
“Our society after the pandemic has a
different outlook,” said Thierry Marx, a Michelin-starred (having been given at least one Michelin star (= a prize
or title given to a restaurant to show that it is of especially good quality)米其林星級（米其林組織授予優質餐廳的獎項，最高三顆星）) French chef who is the president of UMIH, France’s influential
trade association of restaurants and hotels. “People are saying, I don’t want
to have a sacrificial relationship to work.”
(Liz Alderman)
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