https://socialistaction.org/2019/12/30/workers-shut-down-france-to-defend-pensions/
Workers Shut Down France to Defend Pensions!
Socialist Action
/
3 days ago
By MARTY GOODMAN
On December 5th, French workers walked off the job in massive numbers to
protest a proposed attack on pension rights by French President Emmanuel
Macron.
The proposal would change the age required for public workers to receive
full retirement benefits from 62 to 64. French Prime Minister Edouard
Philippe
bluntly told the French working class after the strikes began, “You’re
going to have to work longer.”
Since the strike began, mass transit in major cities have been
paralyzed; schools, hospitals, pharmacies and oil refineries closed or
only offering limited
service. Some electrical power lines have been turned off. Truckers are
on strike too protesting a new fuel tax, and jamming roads for miles
across France.
Many observers say a strike of this size has not been seen in France for
at least 50 years, since the giant strike of May 1968 that involved up
to 10 million
workers.
Even though the changes are targeting public workers, private workers
understand that retirement affects everyone and have joined in the mass
demonstrations
too.
According to government estimates, some 800,000 marched Dec. 5
nationwide, 1.5 million according to the CGT labor federation. More than
100 cities participated.
On Dec.17, as the strike entered its 13th day, hundreds of thousands
mobilized in the streets. ABC news reported, “Hospital workers in
scrubs, Air France
staff in uniforms, lawyers wearing long black robes — people from across
the French workforce joined in the strikes and protests in higher
numbers than
the last cross-sector walkout last week.” Even Opera performers and
ballerinas were out on strike. The tourist mecca, the Eiffel Tower, was
closed for
a second time. Militant electrical workers were said to have cut power
to select locations.
Shipping companies reported, “Stoppages this week by tug-boat personnel
and dock workers have hampered activity at major shipping hubs like Le
Havre and
Marseille.” (Dec.23)
One demonstrator, Ludovic Varlet, a hospital worker in Paris, said that
he was angry with Mr. Macron and remarked that, “It’s him and everything
he represents,”
adding: “Finance is governing. It was the best [pension] system in the
world. And they are about to destroy it.”
Teachers at the Balzac school in Paris said in a statement they were
striking against a reform “that concerns all employees, in the public
and the private
sectors, and much later, our students. Work counts and needs respect,”
it said. “Retirement pensions should be an enduring and definitive sign
of respect
for the accomplishment of years of work.”
Laurent Berger, head of the reformist CFDT union federation, said that
society today is more explosive than in May 1995, a year of massive
strikes that
stopped Alain Juppé, the Prime Minister and President Jacques Chirac,
from implementing a restructuring of the rail system, known as the Juppé
Plan.
Said the economist Daniel Cohen of France’s top-ranked École Normale
Supérieure,
“The government has inflamed unease with this reform. It is the other
France that is revolting today,”
Resistance to Macron’s attack is being led by the public subway workers
of the RATP (Parisian Public Transport Company) and the employees of the
nationalized
regional train system, SNCF (French National Railways). Both workforces
are overwhelmingly members of the Left-leaning labor federation, the
General Confederation
of Labor (CGT). Although not officially part of the Dec. 5 action, the
strike was joined on Dec. 17 by the more moderate Democratic Labor
Confederation
(CFDT), France’s largest labor federation. The CFDT’s Secretary General,
Laurent Berger, said “a red line [had] been crossed” by Macron. Also
participating
in strikes are the unions Workers Force (FO), Solidarity and the United
Union Federation (FSU).
On Dec. 16, in a major blow to Macron and his “En marche” party, the
architect of Macron’s pension “reform,” Jean-Paul Delevoye, admitted
that he had supposedly
“forgot” to inform the government that he was part of an insurance firm
that stood to benefit greatly from the pension changes. He resigned to
avoid any
“misunderstanding.”
Indeed, the pension cuts, set to begin in 2027, will rob retirees of
billions a year in euros (1 euro=$1.11). After Macron’s election in May
2017, during
his first year in office, Macron also abolished a wealth tax – a la
Donald Trump – worth billions and made it easier for companies to
hire and fire.
The massive strike and marches in December were a giant display of fury
against French President Emmanuel Macron and his labor hating agenda
that has not
been seen since the massive strikes in 1995, which defeated similar
attacks on the SNCF rail system and worker’s benefits by conservative
President Jacques
Chirac.
Essential to winning any strike is public support. Polls say that public
support – code for working class support – for the ongoing strike,
despite its
inconveniences, has actually increased since it began. [As of this
writing (Dec. 22), the unions have not said they will suspend the strike
during the
holidays.] The next big mass mobilization is scheduled for January 9.
President Macron, a millionaire investment banker, is proposing the
pension changes to be determined by a “point” system accrued by working,
a method unions
denounce as unjust. Amongst the union’s objections, points would not be
accrued if unemployed. France’s unemployment is currently 8.4%.
“We have two clashing perspectives,” said CGT General Secretary
Philippe Martinez, “We don’t have the same values” and “the government
has ridiculed the
people.” Macron has declared that he was “total” in his commitment to
so-called pension “reform.”
Negotiations between the Macron administration and labor have thus far
not resulted in significant concessions on either side.
It should be understood that the CFDC federation has agreed to a point
system in principle and objects only to moving back the year of
retirement for full
benefits. The CGT opposes both. It is for certain that Macron will seek
to exploit the differences between the two labor federations.
The pension cuts are driven by Macron’s neo-liberal mania but also by
the diktat of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the enforcement arm
of the U.S.
dominated World Bank, and directives from the European Union (EU), both
of which have told France that it must slash funding and services to
working people.
Obviously there is a crisis of confidence in French society that the
strike reflects. Last year, the “Yellow Vest” movement, a leaderless
movement with
somewhat vague, populist demands, that posed a challenge to France’s
elite and its politicians. It mobilized 400,000 protestors on November
17, 2018 and
demonstrated through 2019. Their numbers declined but the current
upsurge has begun to, at least in part, reinvigorate at least some in
the movement.
In 2018, Macron was more successful in selling his message – using the
age-old bosses’ tactic of divide and conquer – declaring that the SNCF’s
decades-old,
jobs-for-life protections cannot go on, as if there was some elite
privilege at having a job!
The rail strikes that followed in the spring and summer of 2018 were big
but sporadic. Union bureaucrats announced to the capitalist class the
timing of
the strikes, giving them plenty of notice to prepare a response. Macron
has insisted that rail “liberalization,” read rail privatization, is
obligatory
under European Union rules, France being behind other member states.
The strike needs to be uninterrupted and not rely on the on-again,
off-again strike strategy that failed in 2018. In reality, none of the
big union leaderships,
including the CGT’s Martinez or the CFDT’s Berger, can be counted on to
lead to a fight to the finish. A real fight must be based on democratic
worker
assemblies that decide strategy.
Only united mass action can defeat the capitalist austerity of Macron
and the rest of the phony bourgeois politicians. The whole rotten
system has got
to go!
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December 30, 2019
in Uncategorized.
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___
Sam Harris
“ I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people
became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs. ”
― Sam Harris,
