France's Socialist presidential frontrunner Francois Hollande said on Saturday he was expecting a wave of layoffs to follow next weekend's election, but pledged his government would not stand idly by as companies dismissed workers. Hollande, 57, is on track to win the May 6 runoff against President Nicolas Sarkozy, due largely to the conservative leader's failure to keep his promise to cut stubbornly high unemployment in the euro zone's second largest economy. Sarkozy, who would become the first president to lose a re-election bid in more than 30 years, received a fresh blow on Thursday when the jobless rate hit its highest level since September 1999. Unemployment in France has not fallen below 7 percent in 30 years. Hollande said unions were already warning that companies were preparing a round of redundancies after the end of the presidential campaign, during which Sarkozy has done everything possible to avoid high-profile industrial closures. “The unions are aware of this. Decisions are being prepared which have been postponed,” Hollande told Le Parisien newspaper in an interview. “It is not our victory which will trigger redundancy plans after May 6.” The prospect of a Socialist winning control of France for the first time since Francois Mitterrand left office in 1995 has irked some investors. Hollande's promise to renegotiate a German-inspired budget discipline pact to redress European governments' finances had stirred fears of a return to the depths of the euro zone crisis. But Hollande warned business leaders he would not stand by as they turned workers onto the streets. “We must tell these companies that we will not accept this without reacting,” he told the newspaper. Large French companies seeking to cut their workforce are obliged by law to agree a plan with unions and the government, which often includes retraining or reallocation of some workers. If this plan is not approved by authorities, employees can contest their redundancies before a tribunal. Hollande has already announced plans to tax income over one million euros at 75 percent and increase taxes on large corporations, particularly banks. He told the newspaper that he would press ahead with plans for a small one-off increase in France's minimum wage, one of the most generous in Europe. “The size of the increase will have to be small given the economic situation, especially for many small businesses,” said Hollande, who proposes indexing the minimum wage not just to inflation but also to economic growth. While Sarkozy blames France's declining competitiveness versus its main trade partner Germany on a steady rise in French wages since 2000, the Socialists say other factors are more decisive, such as technological innovation, the speed and flexibility of production processes and quality of goods.
