Paris — A FELLOW I know arrived at work recently to find that his company had hired someone new, and given the woman his exact job title. Soon afterward, he said, higher-ups cut his department’s budget and stopped replying to his emails.

The man suspects he’s headed for that infamous place in French companies known as “le placard,” or the closet. Many workers here have permanent contracts that make it very hard to fire them. So some companies resort to an illegal strategy: They try to make someone so miserable, he’ll quit. “What happens next is, I’ll lose my team and my staff, and therefore I’ll have nothing to do,” the man predicted. “You still have to come to work every day, but you have no idea why.”

Labor laws are the main topic of conversation here. The government has battled unions and other groups for months over a bill that would, among other things, make it easier to fire people when a company is losing money. This week, short of votes, it forced the bill through the lower house by decree (if a measure on Thursday to block this move fails, the bill will go on to the Senate).

It’s obvious that the current system isn’t working. The bill’s supporters argue that business owners are reluctant to hire employees, because it’s so complicated and expensive to fire them when times are bad. And times are pretty bad: France has 10 percent unemployment, roughly twice the levels in Germany and Britain. For young people, it’s around 24 percent. President François Hollande has said he’ll run for re-election next year only if he succeeds in reducing unemployment.