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On strike
French workers on the move
France has been gripped by a sweeping protest movement
against the neo-liberal measures of Raffarin’s right-wing government. KARL
DEBBAUT writes.
ON JUNE 12 the two central leaders of the French trade union
movement came down to Marseille to address a mass rally at the end of a
260,000-strong demonstration. Bernard Thibault, leader of the Confederation
Generale des Travailleurs (CGT), and Marc Blondel, leader of Force Ouvrière
(FO), left Paris to pay tribute to the public sector workers of France’s second
city, at the forefront of a national strike movement.
The crowd greeted Thibault with loud calls for a general
strike, as they voiced their impatience with the succession of separate national
days of action and began to demand an alternative way forward for the social
movement. Thibault began his speech by denouncing the government for refusing a
televised public debate on pension reform with the trade union leaders: "it’s a
pity for the country and democracy… The government’s stance is intolerable".
Tens of thousands interrupted him with calls for a general strike, but Thibault
continued. "We demand new negotiations, we have no choice but to continue to
call for mobilisations to force the government to negotiate... There will be
another mobilisation next week". Unable to ignore the strikers’ demands
completely he said, "You have made your opinion clear", as again calls for a
general strike go up. "If it [the movement] continues, maybe that will arise".
More calls for a general strike greeted the end of his speech.
Then came Blondel, who first had to ask the crowd to calm
down to allow him to begin his speech. But when he said "we can hear the voice
from the streets", and once again shouts went up for a general strike, for a
second time he had to plead with the crowd for permission to continue. There was
no room to doubt the wish of large layers of workers to have an all-out strike
to defeat the government, at a decisive moment when to push forward or to
temporarily retreat was in the balance.
The pensions ‘reform’ catalyst
THE PENSION REFORM is the centrepiece of the government’s
attack on the living standards and conditions of millions of workers in France.
If Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the prime minister, and François Fillion, the minister
of social affairs, get their way, public-sector workers will have to work, and
pay contributions, for 40 years before they are entitled to a full pension. One
in four of the active French population is either a civil servant, or works in a
state or para-state organisation. This measure slashes the two-and-a-half year
advantage public sector workers have over the private sector, as a first step
towards pushing the retirement age beyond 65. The government proposes to
lengthen the period of contributions to 42 years by 2020 – itself a hoax because
this is designed to be the first step towards lengthening the period of
contributions, and will be revised every five years from 2008 ‘to keep up with
life expectancy’ (so 42 years could be introduced well before 2020). The pension
reform is part of a determined and more general attempt by the French ruling
class to take back some key social provisions won by the hard struggle of the
French working class in the past. It is part of the right-wing government’s
project to cut public spending, lower taxes for the rich, and keep the budget
deficit inside the limits set out by the European stability pact.
Through scraping a growth rate of 0.3% of GDP for the first
three months of 2003, the French economy only narrowly avoided two consecutive
quarters of negative growth (like Germany or the Netherlands) but it hasn’t
escaped the economic crisis of European capitalism. Consumer confidence has been
low throughout 2002 and 2003; corporate investment was negative for the last
three quarters of 2002 (and only picked up with 0.5% growth in the first quarter
of this year), and unemployment is rising steadily. Officially it stands at 9.3%
and there has been a barrage of redundancies in the private sector in recent
months. In March alone, 27,500 workers lost their jobs.
Latest estimates forecast that this year’s budget deficit
will reach 4% of GDP, overshooting the European Union (EU) ‘growth and stability
pact’ by a full percentage point. However, for the ruling class there is more at
stake than the risk of a heavy fine from the EU. In 1995, the right-wing
government of prime minister Alain Juppé, under the patronage of president
Jacques Chirac, was forced to retreat after three weeks of public sector strikes
against pension reforms.
That defeat opened the way for the right’s defeat in the
next round of parliamentary elections, in May 1997, leading to an uneasy
‘cohabitation’ between president Chirac and the ‘gauche plurielle’ government of
the Parti Socialiste (PS), the Parti Communiste (PCF) and the Greens (under
prime minister Lionel Jospin). Uneasy, because the workers’ movement had
defeated the bourgeoisie’s preferred ‘shock programme’ to slash the acquis
sociaux (acquired social rights) and thereby reset the economy on a neo-liberal
basis. Instead the 1997-2002 Jospin government ate away at workers’ rights more
gradually – although still privatising more than any government before – and in
the process deepened the political crisis by undermining its credibility amongst
big layers of workers and thereby its usefulness for the ruling class. In an
opinion poll taken the week after the massive demonstration on Sunday 25 May,
47% said they thought the PS would be neither better nor worse in dealing with
pension reform (47% said the same on education reform and 50% on health reform).
This shows the consciousness of the French workers that the PS, like all other
social-democratic parties in Europe, is completely bourgeoisiefied. A failure by
the Raffarin government to push through the pension reform this time around
would paralyse the political system and strip the present government of all
credibility. Although some observers say it was Chirac’s plan to use him and
then replace him by a more popular figure, any succeeding government would lack
authority for the remaining four years of this legislature.
The social movement emerges
THE PENSION PLANS have acted as a catalyst in uniting
different actions, movements and strikes against the government and its plans.
The teachers and non-teaching staff have been in the forefront of the struggle
against Raffarin’s ‘decentralisation’ plan. Raffarin, a little known provincial
politician before his appointment as prime minister, has championed this
devolution as his most important political project. Its initial aim was to cut
state spending by transferring 110,000 non-teaching staff from the
responsibility of the ministry of national education (and therefore the national
budget) to regional and departmental authorities (although in a partial
concession Raffarin withdrew 20,000 workers from this plan).
Teachers and non-teaching staff started the movement against
these plans in Autumn last year. They set up committees and local general
assemblies, inviting parents and the local community to participate, and
explained what the proposals would mean. Teachers, parents and local communities
rallied against the closure of smaller institutions, future privatisations, and
the growing influence of big business in education. In spite of months of media
black out they pulled together the general assemblies of different schools on a
city wide, regional and later a national level. On different websites, created
by activists, a daily and lively debate takes place (for example,
20pourtous.free.fr argues that all students should be given top grades this
year in the baccalauréat, the national entrance exam to university; or
lpengreve.free.fr which argues for action to be retaken in September).
The eleven separate national days of action organised by the
teachers and their unions pulled in behind them other sections of public-sector
workers under attack from the government. These actions generated the confidence
for a massive response to the specific attack on pension rights. Two days of
protest action in February and April were followed by large May Day
demonstrations, with 300,000 people marching in Paris. The movement then took
two huge leaps forward with a day of strikes and demonstrations on May 13 by two
million workers in 115 towns and cities, and a national demonstration in Paris
on May 25 of 1.5 million workers (with hundreds of thousands more marching in
other cities). By mid-May the movement had gone beyond a response to the
specific attacks. Public sector workers who would not have been directly
affected by the pension plans brought into the movement their concerns over
privatisation, job losses and cuts. Layers of private sector workers were now
joining in to protest against the threat neo-liberal policies pose to all
workers. On May 25 an opinion poll in the Paris daily, Le Parisien, said that
74% expected the social movement to continue, with 65% approving of the
demonstration.
‘Grève générale’
AFTER THE MAY 25 demonstration, national days of action were
called for the first weeks of June. In between the national days of action,
local demonstrations, strikes, and occupations of town halls and buildings of
the MEDEF (the employers federation) took place. Some public sector workers have
extended official action days by staying out the next day, such as metro bus and
rail workers in the Paris region and almost all public sector workers in
Marseille, where education workers (two months) and bin workers (two weeks) were
already striking for longer periods.
In the face of government defiance, wider numbers began to
recognise the need for a general strike of public and private sector workers. At
demonstrations, contingents of Force Ouvrière and CGT workers introduced the
slogan, ‘Blondel-Thibault, Thibault-Blondel: grève générale’, calling directly
upon their leaders to organise it. Contingents of the third main trade union
confederation, the CFDT, were extremely angry with their leadership who had
signed a deal with the government.
The leaders of FO and CGT have been struggling to keep
themselves at the head of the movement while at the same time trying to stop it
from developing into a general strike. Thibault went on his knees to beg the
government to reopen negotiations, warning Raffarin in Le Monde that he might
not be able to stop the flood. His comments that "the government is set out to
break everything", and that "we are not calling for a general strike since it
would weaken the CGT for years to come", should not be misunderstood. The union
leaders fear that they would not be able to control a general strike and that it
would open the way for a Thatcherite attack and attempts to destroy the trade
union apparatus. The 47th congress of the CGT held at the beginning
of this year tried to move the goalposts for the biggest and still the most
combative trade union confederation. It marked the beginning of a process in
which the leadership wanted to pass from a union of ‘contestation’ (protest) to
a union of ‘proposition’ (proposal). They wanted to ‘modernise’ the union into
one ready to ‘share responsibilities’ for the capitalist crisis. They avoided
any debate on the declining trade union membership in France (only 9% of workers
are members of a union) or discuss a balance sheet of the CGT’s role.
What the leadership wants, however, the leadership does not
always get. Last December, in the run up to the CGT congress, a huge blow was
dealt to the whole idea of a negotiating instead of a fighting union by the
workers of Electricité de France (EdF) and Gaz de France (GdF). The government
had counted on overhauling the pension rights of the state-owned electricity and
gas utilities in a separate deal. This was designed to both pave the way for
their privatisation and to allow an agreement on pensions in these industries to
set the standard for the broader public sector in the new year. Although the
leadership of the main trade union confederations, including the CGT, had struck
a deal, the grass roots membership rejected it in a ballot.
Force Ouvrière, for its part, in May rejected the option of
a general strike with Blondel arguing that it would be ‘insurrectional’ and pose
the question of a political alternative. The FO changed its position in June,
however, with Blondel saying at the Marseille demonstration on June 12 that FO
was in favour of a general strike but didn’t want to break the united union
front.
In fact the union leaders are an obstacle on the path to a
prepared general strike to defeat Raffarin’s plans. They are actively
undermining the movement by dividing the action and leaving intervals between
different strike days, which has allowed for tiredness and doubt to affect some
public-sector workers. In the face of a general onslaught by the government, all
are clear that more is needed than separate days of action. Activists in Gauche
Révolutionnaire (GR), the French section of the Committee for a Workers’
International, played a leading role in their local general assemblies and
strike committees, realising the key role these bodies could play in building a
general strike. They called for a determined plan to develop them, arguing that
they should be delegate-based with all delegates subject to recall, cross-linked
between public and private sectors, and linked up between regions and on a
national level.
A general strike, however limited in its initial aims, would
indeed pose the question of the political alternative to this government and
would question capitalism itself. Amongst the advanced layers, these issues were
increasingly debated at the height of the movement. The present government came
to power after the elections a little more than a year ago, when former PS prime
minister Lionel Jospin picked up the bill for five years of neo-liberal policies
by coming third in the first round of the presidential elections. After the
first round some on the left, notably the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR)
and the leadership of the trade unions, argued that the second round run-off
should become a referendum against Jean-Marie Le Pen (leader of the far-right
Front National – FN) and called in effect for a vote for Chirac. This is but one
of the debates that is being re-opened by workers in the course of the struggle
as they look for the reasons why this government is so strong and confident.
Gauche Révolutionnaire’s position in the second round, recognising that Le Pen
had no hope of winning, was to cast a blank vote and, most importantly, to argue
that opposition to Le Pen and Chirac had to be built on the streets. (See
Socialism Today No.66, June 2002) We called on the LCR and Lutte Ouvrière (LO),
who had polled a combined vote of more than 10% in the first round of the
presidential elections, to take the initiative to begin to build a new mass
force of the working class. Yet both these organisations have failed to
capitalise on their 2002 vote by adopting a programme that can take the workers’
struggle forward and lay the basis for a new party.
Such a new mass party of the working class would have to go
beyond anti-capitalist rhetoric and pose the need for a workers’ alternative to
the Raffarin government and to capitalism in a concrete way. It would have to
fight to build the movement and prepare the working class to carry through
decisive action to defeat the capitalists under a socialist programme of public
ownership of the major companies and banks. It would argue for the introduction
of a socialist plan of production, to lay the basis for a socialist society that
would guarantee decent services and living standards for all. The existence of
such a party or even steps towards such a party would increase the confidence of
the working class to take further action.
Although it looks like the movement in France will recede
during the summer it has been far from beaten. Raffarin wants to push the
pensions reform through parliament before July 14 and in an attempt to divide
the movement has postponed the education decentralisation plans until 2004, and
made some other minor concessions. Chirac, in the meantime, has announced
another wave of generalised attacks, with an overhaul of social security and, in
particular, national health insurance, to be presented over the next few months.
Different leaders of the Union de la Majorité Présidentielle (UMP), the party of
the right-wing majority, are getting overexcited and want to open a second front
against the public services. Plans to try a second time to open EdF and GdF to
privatisation, and the introduction of strike-breaking measures – such as
guaranteeing a minimum service during public service strikes – are all being
debated. They might well be overstretching their powers and underestimating
their opponent. Chirac likes to be compared to his great idol, General De
Gaulle. He too underestimated the power of the working class until it was
unleashed in 1968 and he found himself temporarily fleeing the country. |