Endurance Games: Reassessing the mass strike based on recent experiences in France

Joint worker and student protest against the First Employment Contract in Rennes April 4 2006

Lisbeth Latham

Dwindling rates of industrial action - particularly in advanced capitalist countries- are often cited as evidence of the labour movement’s global decline. Yet the value of industrial action, and particularly mass strikes, are often grossly oversimplified. ‘If we strike, we will win’ may galvanise workers temporarily, but it belies the complex nature of social movements, where a willingness to struggle is only part of the formula necessary for victory. The complexity of this reality can be seen in the experiences of the contemporary French labour movement. In comparison to movements in other advanced capitalist countries, the French movement is often seen as incredibly militant and powerful. Yet, since the global financial crisis in 2008, it has suffered a series of defeats and has found it increasingly difficult to mobilise to the same extent as before. This is not to say that the French movement is any less heroic than it was in the past, but that the balance of class forces and the confidence of the French popular classes has declined. This has exposed limitations in the mass strike as an industrial tactic when it is not paired with a broader perspective of victory; winning requires not only mass involvement but also a determination to maintain struggle at times in the face of defeat.

The Mass Strike
One of the most influential works on strikes is The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions written by Rosa Luxemburg in 1906[1]. She sought to explore the experiences of Russia's failed 1905 revolution and draw lessons for the broader European social democratic movement. Prior to the pamphlet’s publication, social democracy had been highly critical of mass strikes, seeing them as an anarchist fantasy, as Luxemburg put it

“the theory of the general strike as a means of inaugurating the social revolution, in contradistinction to the daily political struggle of the working-class – and exhausts itself in the following simple dilemma: either the proletariat as a whole are not yet in possession of the powerful organisation and financial resources required, in which case they cannot carry through the general strike; or they are already sufficiently well organised, in which case they do not need the general strike”[2]

Contrary to this view Luxemburg argued:

“the mass strike in Russia has been realised not as means of evading the political struggle of the working-class, and especially of parliamentarism, not as a means of jumping suddenly into the social revolution by means of a theatrical coup, but as a means, firstly, of creating for the proletariat the conditions of the daily political struggle and especially of parliamentarism. The revolutionary struggle in Russia, in which mass strikes are the most important weapon, is, by the working people, and above all by the proletariat, conducted for those political rights and conditions whose necessity and importance in the struggle for the emancipation of the working-class”[3].

The subsequent role of mass strike movements in creating legitimation crises for the capitalist class, blunting their offensive, and creating the impetus for revolutions has vindicated Luxemburg’s position[4]. At the same time mass strikes, like other tactics, have their limitations and even large mass strikes, as demonstrated by Russia in 1905, do not guarantee the successful achievement of a movement’s objectives.

The recent movements in France in defence of pensions and against labour market reforms are important experiences in demonstrating both the strengths and weaknesses of the mass strike as a political tactic.

Leading into the global financial crisis the French working class had achieved a series of victories against government attacks. Most notably: 

• the strike wave against attacks on the public sector attacks in 1995 
• the movement leading up to the defeat of the referendum on endorsing the Lisbon treaty in 2005; and
• the mass movement lead by students against the contrat première embauche (First Employment Contact - CPE) legislation in 2006[5]

At the same time the French organised left was in a process of breakdown and realignment. The Parti Communiste Francais (PCF) , once the hegemonic force on the French left saw its vote in presidential elections fall from 15.35% % in 1981 to 3.37% in 2002. As its old red-belt strongholds became locations of strength for the Front Nationale. deindustrialisation under successive Parti Socialiste (PS) -with the PCF as a minority partner- shattered France’s traditional heavy industrial areas[7]. The impact on the working class in these areas was devastating. Consequently, the PCF’s parliamentary representation became increasingly dependent on a non-aggression pact with the PS, who did not run candidates against sitting PCF MPs. This dependent relationship between the PCF and the PS was to become a key point of conflict in discussions regarding joint far-left candidates, with the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR) and subsequently the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste setting down a priori independence from the PS as a key basis for any discussions about united left electoral tickets[8].

It was not just the PCF who was negatively impacted; the PS suffered the indignity of running third in the 2002 presidential elections behind Jacques Chirac and Front Nationale’s (National Front - FN) Jean-Marie Le Pen[9]. Whilst some blamed this embarrassment on the shock results of the Trotskyist LCR (4.25%) and Lutte Ouvrière (5.72%) candidates, it still posed the question of why people weren’t voting for the PS. It also failed to explain why workers were voting for small far-left parties instead, or even abstaining from voting at all. This put the left in the position of having to respond to a presidential run-off between the right and the far-right - an unenviable position which was repeated in 2017 with the runoff between Macron and Marine Le Pen.

2009 Post GFC Movement
Triggered by the mass defaulting of subprime mortgages in the US economy and exacerbated by the failure of the mortgage backed securities which underwrote the loans, the GFC of 2007-2008 spread like an infection through the global financial sector. Yet as governments scrambled to bailout high finance, they also sought to shift the cost onto working people.[10]

In France this response was met with mass resistance. The intersyndicale (an informal alliance of union confederations at a national level) called for mass mobilisations against the policies of Sarkozy and the Fillon government. Their demands included: Increases in the minimum wage and payments to the unemployed and pensioners; Increased social spending on public housing; Action to reduce job losses including bans on redundancies at profitable companies; Reversal of the tax cuts given to the rich at the start of the crisis; Reversal of job losses and restructuring of the public sector[11]

The intersyndicale achieved a series of mass mobilisations throughout 2009, the largest of which was the general strike of March 19 which drew over 3 million people[12]. Despite these mobilisations the coalition was unable to force any real concessions from the government and, as they progressed, the mobilisations lost impetus.

This development was not a surprise to all the union leaderships. One of France’s most militant union confederations, the openly anti-capitalist Solidaires, consistently argued for a need to go beyond individual days of mobilisation. Solidaires predicted that, however successful, individual days of mobilisation alone would not be enough to steer the government from its well-worn course of protecting capital at the expense of working people. Instead, Solidaires argued for the need to build towards a renewable general strike[13]. As evidence of the effectiveness of this approach they pointed to the successful strikes by workers in the French colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe from January to March of that year. Although Solidaires leadership did concede under pressure from other unions that capacity for such action did not exist, they argued that the work still needed to be done. Affirming the movement’s need and capacity to mobilise on both a mass and ongoing basis would be more productive than simply acknowledging and accepting its inadequacies, they felt[14].

As 2009 continued the movement declined. By 13 June the once three million-strong movement had plummeted to a mere 150, 000 and was essentially over, having achieved very little in the way of concessions. At the same time, the state was preparing a new wave of attacks on working people, this time in the form of an assault on France’s pension system.

Joint mobilisation against the attack on France's Pension System 2010

2010 Pension Struggle
In early 2010, the Fillon government announced that it was seeking to change France’s pension system. The proposed changes included raising the retirement age and increasing workers’ contributions to the social security scheme - effectively requiring workers to work more hours over a greater duration of their lifetimes.

In the wake of this announcement, the Intersyndicale resumed meeting in earnest. Their concerns were well-founded. Though Fillon’s attack on the pension system threatened to disadvantage all workers, its impacts would be felt most acutely by women, significantly reducing the number of women expected to qualify for a full pension and exacerbating the problem of French women retiring into poverty.

From the outset, the unions were divided in their view of the objectives of the movement. The class-struggle unions (combat syndicales), whose membership includes Solidaires (Solidarity), Force Ouvrière (Workers Force - FO), and large sections of both the Federation Syndicale Unitaire (FSU) and Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) wanted the proposals to be totally withdrawn. The more conservative unions, most notably the Confédération française démocratique du travail (French Confederation of Democratic Workers - CFDT) and Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens (French Confederation of Christian Workers - CFTC) were more conciliatory, seeking greater consultation with the government regarding the changes. Yet despite these differences, there was eventually a basis for a common united movement involving France’s eight main union confederations and federations - although the early movement involved just five[15].

Initially, the 2010 movement was far smaller than the previous years with the March protests reaching only 800, 000 nationally. These disappointing numbers inevitably gave rise to commentary that the defeat of 2009 had undermined the mobilising capacity of the movement. However, as the year progressed the movement began to grow and the pace of mobilisations increased. By 24 June mobilisations had reached 1.92 million. Numbers continued to grow as the legislation worked its way through France’s legislative processes in September and October. Ultimately, there were seven mobilisations, all exceeding two million people and peaking at 3.5 million. However, the total number of people involved in the movement is likely to have been far greater[16].

Solidaires Adverstisment calling for a genderal strike on September 9, 2010

Significantly, in a number of industries the days of mobilisation were linked by strike action. Initially these renewable strikes began in France’s oil refineries - triggered by a struggle around Total’s plans to close its Dunkirk refinery[17]. Yet the movement also spread to other sectors. This spread was facilitated, in part, by a decision within the intersyndicale to allow industrial action in workplaces, and at the municipal level, to be initiated by general assemblies of workers at those levels. This meant that, in those sectors and regions where the more militant unions had greater influence, they were able to link protracted strikes to the mobilisations, which were then called and supported by all unions between the punctuating mass mobilisations. Under France’s Labour Code and constitution, if one union in a workplace issues a strike notice then any worker can participate regardless of their union affiliation. While there were a number of spaces where renewable strikes were in effect, the most important of these was in the oil refineries whose closure massively disrupted fuel supplies across France[18].

Despite the size and escalating character of the movement the government pushed ahead with passing the legislation. In the wake of the passing of the legislation in November, there was one more joint mass mobilisation on November 23. The interior ministry estimated the protests size at 52, 000 and the unions did not announce a size estimate. This small mobilisation indicated that the movement had effectively collapsed. The more conservative unions withdrew from the campaign on the promise that the legislation, whose impact was not immediate but delayed, could be defeated via the election of a PS government in 2012.Those workers who remained on strike - most notably the oil refinery workers - became increasingly isolated as the movement collapsed. In Marseille, a city controlled by the PS, municipal workers were forced back to work using legislation introduced by the de Vilipin government the year before[19]. This legislation, which guaranteed minimum essential services during strikes, was anti-worker by design and undermined a number localised strikes that were holding out against the collapse of the broader movement

 

Mobilisation in Marseille March 18, 2006

Movement against the First Employment Contract
In 2006, the de Villipin government had sought to introduce the CPE, a change in France’s employment laws which would have weakened the rights of workers under the age of 26, including allowing employers to dismiss young workers aged between 18-26 without notice or reason during their first two years of employment[20]. By targeting just younger workers, the de Villepin government hoped that by focusing on one section of the workforce they could divide and limit any potential opposition movement.

Initially this was the case, as there was limited united resistance by the union confederations[21]. However, despite the lack of leadership from workers’ unions, high school and university students, primarily organised via the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France (National Union of Students of France), Fédération indépendante et démocratique lycéenne (Independent and Democratic High School Federation), and the Union Nationale Lycéenne (National Union of Secondary Students) began their own mass mobilisations - shutting down schools and universities and driving mass mobilisations of students. These student mobilisations gave impetus for militants within the union confederations to push to support the student protests[22]. Between the rising peaks of mass mobilisations, student pursued a broader goal of disrupting the economy via their own collective actions and concentrated on building alliances with workers to support and exacerbate the disruption. By March 2006, 68 of France’s 89 universities were either occupied or on strike with many high schools across France barricaded shut by striking students[24]. More spectacular were the student occupations of rail lines or the successful blocking of Airbus airliners being transported from manufacturing plants[25].

As inspiring as the movement was, it was not significantly bigger or more disruptive than the 2010 movement. What really differentiated the 2006 movement against the CPE from the 2010 movement to defend pensions was that when the CPE was passed, the movement continued. In passing the legislation in 2006, the de Villepin government gambled that passing of the legislation would dissipate the movement and remove the threat to French state and capital[26]. When the movement continued despite the legislation passing the threat effectively expanded with no hope that it would decline in the short-term. In response to the movement’s determination, the government retreated and the legislation, despite passing, became a dead letter[27].

The lesson to be drawn from comparing the events of 2006 and 2010 is not that mass movements are no longer capable of winning, or that strikes are no longer crucial to achieving victory in industrial and political struggles. It is instead that these struggles are ultimately battles of will and endurance. What changed between 2006 and 2010 was not the capacity of the movement to mobilise- indeed the 2010 movement was arguably larger in size than the 2006 mobilisations. No, what differed between them was the determination of the ruling class to persist with their attacks on working people and, even more crucially, the ability in 2006 of the more radical sections of the movement, most notably the student unions, to cohere and mobilise after the passing of the legislation. It is not sufficient for our movements to be massive or powerful. In order to be victorious,the will and determination of workers must be strong enough to outlast that of capital and its governments. Escalating and disruptive action is thus most effective when deployed as a means of undermining capital’s confidence and endurance. The continuation of the mass movement of 2006 and consequent disruption of the economy cast the gamble made by the right to push forward with legislation as a grievous error, creating the fear that the movement would not stop. By contrast in 2010, the government’s bet proved correct, the movement did collapse and the state and capital could both be confident not only to maintain that round of attacks but contemplate and implant further attacks on working people.

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1 Luxemburg, R. 1906. The mass strike, the political party, and the trade unions. Marxist Internet 
Archive. https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1906/mass-strike/.
2 ibid.
3 ibid.
4 Haug, F., Wilde, F., and Heidenreich, F. 2018. “Mass strike.” Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung. https://www.rosalux.de/publikation/id/43671/mass-strike?cHash=4dc514bc263b77a899f91e9878b10683.
5 Cézard, Yann. 2020. “1995-2003-2010: lessons from three large-scale mobilizations.” International Viewpoint. https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article6347.
   Carasso, L. 2005. “E After the success of the "no from the left."” International Viewpoint. https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article845.
   Carasso, L. 2006. “A major social and solitical crisis.” International Viewpoint. https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1070.
6 Amable, B. and Palombarini, S. 2021. The last neoliberal: Macron and the origins of France's political crisis. London: Verso.
7 Jacobin. 2016. “When the workers were communists.” Jacobin. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/10/when-the-workers-were-communists/.
8 Perez, Benito. 2007. “The presidential campaign is rotting French political life.” International Viewpoint. https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1214.
   Ligue Communiste Revolutionaire. 2007. “For the foundation of a new anti-capitalist party.” International Viewpoint. https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1290.
   Ligue Communiste Revolutionaire. 2008. “Address for a new anticapitalist party.” International Viewpoint. https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1422.
9 Henley, J. 2002. “French poll result seen as catastrophe.” DAWN. https://www.dawn.com/news/29700/french-poll-result-seen-as-catastrophe.
10 Mirowski, P. 2014. Never let a serious crisis go to waste: How neoliberalism survived the financial meltdown. London: Verso.
11 Latham, L. 2009a. “French unions ready for a general strike on March 19.” Revitalising Labour. https://revitalisinglabour.blogspot.com/2009/03/french-unions-ready-for-general-strike.html.
12 Latham, L. 2009b. “French unions plan campaign against financial crisis Following 3 Million strong general strike.” Revitalising Labour. https://revitalisinglabour.blogspot.com/2009/03/french-union-plan-campaign-following-3.html.
13 National Burea of the Trade Union Solidaires. 2009. “Together let us make the assessment - To be stronger tomorrow.” Revitalising Labour. https://revitalisinglabour.blogspot.com/2009/09/solidaires-assessment-of-french.html.
14 ibid.
15 Latham, L. 2010a. “Thousands of French workers march to defend pensions.” Revitalising Labour. https://revitalisinglabour.blogspot.com/2010/03/thousands-of-french-workers-march-to.html.
16 ibid
Latham, L. 2010b. “French workers mobilise to defend pensions.” Revitalising Labour. https://revitalisinglabour.blogspot.com/2010/06/french-workers-mobilise-to-defend.html.
Latham, L. 2010c. “Millions of workers march to defend pensions in France.” Revitalising Labour. https://revitalisinglabour.blogspot.com/2010/09/millions-of-workers-march-to-defend.html.
Latham, L. 2010d. “French workers fight back against pension attack.” Revitalising Labour. https://revitalisinglabour.blogspot.com/2010/10/french-workers-fight-back-against.html.
Trade Union Solidaires. 2010. “Solidaires - Pensions: Win by our determination!” Revitalising Labour. https://revitalisinglabour.blogspot.com/2010/10/solidaires-pensions-win-by-our.html.
17 Latham, L. 2010e. “French Senate votes to raise retirement age as unions prepare for a day of strikes.” Revitalising Labour. https://revitalisinglabour.blogspot.com/2010/10/french-senate-votes-to-raise-retirement.html.
18 Andrews, W. and Vandoorne, S. 2010. “Fuel imports into France surge as protests imperil transportation.” CNN. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/10/18/france.strikes.shortage/index.html.
19 Latham, L. 2010f. “France: Sarkozy enacts pensions law as mass mobilisations continue.” Revitalising Labour. https://revitalisinglabour.blogspot.com/2010/11/france-sarkozy-enacts-pensions-law-as.html.
    Smith, M. 2010. “France: Not victorious, but not defeated.” Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal. http://links.org.au/node/2034.
20 Steven. 2006. “The French movement against the CPE, 2006.” libcom. https://libcom.org/blog/short-history-cpe-protests-france.
21 Cézard op cit.
22 Cézard op cit.
     Steven op cit
     Périn, M. 2006. “Inside the occupation movement: ‘Together we are recreating our university.’” Socialist Worker, March 18, 2006. https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/8300/Inside+the+occupation+movement%3A+Together+we+are+recreating+our+university.
23 Smith, M. 2006a. “Student movement puts government on the defensive.” International Viewpoint. https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article996.
Wolfreys, J. 2006. “Daniel Bensaïd: ‘This movement is directly based on a social question.’” Socialist Worker. https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/8364/Daniel+Bensa%C3%AFd%3A+This+movement+is+directly+based+on+a+social+question.
24 Duthu, M. 2006. “French workers and youth unite against the First Employment Contract: No to all precarious contracts.” In Defence of Marxism. https://www.marxist.com/french-workers-youth-unite160306.htm.
Smith, M. 2006b. “Anti-labour law movement enters key stage.” International Viewpoint. https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1000.
25 Chrisafis, A. 2006. “Chirac backs down and scraps youth job law.” The Guardian, April 11, 2006. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/apr/11/france.angeliquechrisafis.
26 ibid.
     Cézard op cit.
     Steven op cit.
27 Cézard op cit.

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COVID-19: Workers should not be made to mortgage our future

Lisbeth Latham

As part of the Morrison Coalition government’s second COVID-19 stimulus package, treasurer Josh Frydenberg announced that workers would be able to draw on their superannuation savings by $10,000, this and next financial year, to meet immediate needs.

It highlights the Coalition’s inadequate response and its determination to shift the cost of its failure onto working people. At the same time, it is bailing out corporations.

Since its inception, Australia’s superannuation system reinforces and reproduces the inequality within the labour force and extends it into retirement.

The system shifts the responsibility of supporting retirees from government onto working people, via a system which defers and redirects wages into the superannuation system.

This deferral has allowed capital to inject billions of dollars into financial markets, predominantly the Australian one: Australian Superannuation Funds held $2.9 trillion in assets in July 2019.

It has allowed the government to justify its failure to provide adequate retirement pensions to workers because they are supposed to have enough superannuation to rely on in retirement.

As a result, Australia has the second highest rate of retirees living in poverty in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, with 35.5% of people over the age of 65 living in poverty, the overwhelming majority being women.

While the superannuation system is flawed, it is important that it does not become even worse. Forcing workers to draw on their superannuation to survive during the COVID-19 crisis will decimate the superannuation accounts of millions of workers.

Many of these people will already be among the most vulnerable and low-paid workers: they are unlikely to be able to rebuild their superannuation accounts. This will result in many workers living in poverty in their retirement.

If the crisis deepens for an extended period, there is a danger that workers will be pressured to to draw down even further on their savings. This will put workers at risk of losing the built-in insurance in superannuation funds that requires their balance be above $5000.

Age	Average balance: men	Average balance: women
20-24	$5,924	$5,022
25-29	$23,712	$19,107
30-34	$43,583	$33,748
35-39	$64,590	$48,874
40-44	$99,959	$61,922
45-49	$145,076	$87,543
50-54	$172,126	$99,520
55-59	$237,022	$123,642
60-64	$270,710	$157,049

Source: Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia

Beyond the short and long-term impacts on individual workers forced to draw on their superannuation savings, this proposal will potentially spark a liquidity crisis for the superannuation funds and thereby impact all workers.

The funds only hold so much cash at any one time which, in addition to being a form of investment, is used to reimburse funds to members.

If struggling workers start drawing down their superfunds, this will add pressure to those funds which may be forced to liquidate other assets, most likely shares. This will prompt superfunds to sell even more stocks, wiping out more of the value of shares and reducing the savings of all members.

Under these circumstances, speculators such as Gerry Harvey will be in a position to buy shares at much lower value and position themselves to profit handsomely from the COVID-19 crisis. This is in addition to the same profiteers receiving a direct government stimulus.

Many workers will not have any other option but to draw on their savings. But unions must demand that companies and the government guarantee workers’ wages during the COVID-19 crisis so workers do not need to draw on savings.

Moreover, we must demand that the aged pension, along with all other welfare payments, be lifted to at least the new level of the jobseeker benefit.

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[This article was originally published in Green Left Weekly #1258].

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France: Philippe Government Guillotines Parliamentary Debate to Force Through Pension Attacks

Lisbeth Latham

On February 29, French prime minister Edouard Philippe announced that the government would use clause 49.3 of the French Constitution, which allows the government to pass legislation without a parliamentary vote, to enable the government to expedite the passing the government’s controversial pension reforms. The exercise of Guillotine was primarily aimed at blunting efforts by left parties to hold up the passage of the legislation through parliament. However, the government also hopes that the passage of the legislation will undermine the current movement to defend the pensions.

Pensions Legislation
Despite the government announcing it would push through the legislation, it remains unclear exactly what form the legislation will take, with France24 reporting that the pension age will remain at 62, however, the “Pivot Age” when workers can access their full pension will be extended to 64 – which reflects concessions to the opponents of the counter-reforms.


This is the first time since 2015, that a government has activated clause 49.3 to push through legislation. The clause allows the government to pass legislation without a parliamentary vote, with parliamentary opponents of legislation only able to block it if they can pass a motion of “no confidence” in the government. During the passing of the El Khomri attacks on France’s Labour Law, when Macron was the finance minister in the Parti Socialiste (PS) government. On that occasion, clause 49.3 was enacted because opposition within the PS put at risk the government’s majority and the government correctly assessed that they would be less at risk of a no-confidence vote.

Parliamentary Response
The Philippe government’s use of clause 49.3 is not a response to a concern of an inability to pass legislation, despite some defections, the ruling Le REM (République en Marche - Republic on the March) government has a comfortable parliamentary majority. Instead, the government is seeking to truncate debate over more than 40, 000 amendments which have been moved by the opposition, primarily the parties of the left. After 119 hours of debate, there are still more than 29 000 amendments that are yet to be discussed. Philippe in parliamentary debate described the step of cutting debate as “not to put an end to debate but to end this period of non-debate”. Motions of no confidence have been flagged by both MPs of the Parti Communiste Francais and France Insoumise (France Untamed - FI) and by the far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally). FI leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon denounced the use of clause 49.3 as an “extraordinarily violent” methods of the government.

The movement continues
Since the start of the mobilisations and strikes against the pensions reforms on December 5, France’s union movement has been highly divided. With left-wing trade unions and student organisations calling ongoing mobilisations, strikes, and blockades aimed at the total withdrawal the counter-reforms, also linked to local and sectorial struggles – including the longest transport strike in France in the last 50 years. On the other hand, the more conservative unions, particularly the Confédération française démocratique du travail (French Democratic Confederation of Labour - CFDT), have sought to focus on lobbying the government for amendments to mitigate against the worst aspects of the counter-reforms. With the leadership CFDT actively making statements against the mobilisations of more left unions, including tweets from the CFDT denouncing strikes as a method of struggle for unions. This conservatism and limited participation in the mobilisations have led to significant tensions between the CFDT and the memberships of more militant unions, tensions which have come to protests by militants from Solidaires and Confédération Générale du Travail (General Confederation of Labour - CGT) at the CFDT national headquarters, including the cutting off of electricity to CFDT building by CGT power workers. Protests which have been denounced by the CFDT leadership as an attempt at intimidation.

"There are alternative ways to pursue claims. A strike is not the necessary means of unionization. In Nantes, faced with the refusal to wear shorts in summer, the bus drivers had come in skirts for example".

In response, the leaderships of the CGT, Force Ouvriere (Workers Force), Fédération Syndicale Unitaire (Unitary Trade Union Federation), and Solidaires have denounced the activation of clause 49.3 and called for new mobilisations from March 5-8 as well as calling for amplifying the mobilisations which had already called for March 31. The struggle against the pension reforms will also be a feature of the International Women’s Day mobilisations and Women’s Strike on March 8 and 9.

In contrast, the CFDT and Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens (French Confederation of Christian Workers) have announced that they are hopeful the government will still include amendments which they have lobbied for in the final legislation. The government will be hoping that the pushing through of the legislation will help demobilise the movement against the counter-reforms, which is what has happened with previous movements over the last decade. However, a major difference between the current movement and those previous ones, is that the conservative unions have played almost no role in the current mobilisations, and so they will not be able to have the same demobilisation effect on the movement as they did in the past.

In addition to the coming mobilisations, the municipal elections, scheduled for March 15 and March 22, are expected to be a significant test of public opinions towards the government. Indeed, it is thought that the pushing through of the legislation prior to elections was aimed at reducing the extent to which the elections would be used to protest against Le REM candidates.
Whilst the government appears confident that it has successfully passed its counter-reforms, it remains to be seen if this will signal the end of the movement or its intensification.

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Lisbeth Latham is a contributing editor with the Irish Broad Left.
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France: The Struggle to Defend the French Pension System

Lisbeth Latham

Since December 5, France has been gripped by ongoing strikes and mobilisations by a coalition of trade unions, high school and university student unions, as well as the gilet jaunes (yellow vests) to defeat the attack by the Macron and the Philippe government on France’s pension system. Whilst the alliance has been able to sustain a period of heightened mobilisations that have put the government under pressure, it remains unclear that the movement is powerful to defeat the attack, and there are serious barriers if the movement is to expand and grow.

Pension Counter Reforms
During the 2017 election campaign, Macron promised that he would look to “reform” France’s pension system. The current attacks both build on the changes to the pension system pushed through by the Sarkozy and Fillon government in 2010, and the failed attacks on the Special Retirement Plans for workers in a number of public services and recently privatised companies, launched in 1995 and 2007. These attacks have been justified on the need to make the pension system sustainable in the face of France’s ageing population (France’s pension system relies on pensions being paid out on the payments of current workers, with excess payments going into an investment fund).

The changes affecting the majority of French workers would increase the age which workers could access their pensions to 64 (in 2027) up from 62 years of age currently (Pivot Age), increase the period of time that workers have to have been working in order to qualify for a full pension from 42 to 43 years, and increase the age at which workers can retire on a full-pension without which working the minimum qualifying years work (Equalising Age).

The Special Retirement Plans refer to 42 different pension schemes received by workers in 15 organisations including rail workers with SNCF (French National Railway Company) and RATP (Autonomous Operator of Parisian Transportation), members of the Paris Opera, lawyers, members of the army, sailors, and the National Police. Workers in these primarily public organisations had had pension schemes (some of them dating back to Louis XIV) that had been in place prior to the introduction of the national pension scheme in October 1945. The Special Retirement Plans, tend to allow earlier retirement – many of these jobs are extremely physically strenuous, provide for workers to receive a higher defined benefit than the standard pensions, and have better indexation (the standard pension is indexed at inflation, whilst the majority of the Special Retirement Plan pensions provide for workers to have their pensions to be indexed with wage increases in their former industry). This attack on these has been justified on the basis of providing transparency and equality to the French pension system and would also secure the financial basis of the pensions in these plans (all of which are in sectors in which there have had significant contraction in employment and so there are substantial more retirees dependent on the pensions than workers contributing to the schemes), with the aim of splitting opposition to the pension reform.

Union Responses
Opposition to the proposed changes have been premised on four major arguments:
First that the changes will disproportionately affect women, who due to the socialised norms around responsibility for child-rearing means that women are more likely to have substantial career breaks and already many French women are unable to qualify for a full-pension prior to reaching pivot age, unions argue that increasing both the qualifying period and the full-pension age will cast greater numbers of women poverty in retirement - currently, women who have children are given credit towards their pension qualification, 1 year per child in the public sector, two-years per child in the private section, the proposed changes would remove this. Women currently receive 29% of the pensions of men, however, the CGT (Confédération générale du travail - General Confederation of Labour) expects this gap to rise to 42% if the current protections for women are removed as proposed.

Secondly, that increases in the pension ages mean that workers will increasingly be unable to retire prior to the onset of the illnesses of old age, and so fewer and fewer workers will be able to have a healthy period of retirement prior to the onset of these illnesses.

Your pharmacist recommends retirement before arthritis

Thirdly, the changes will unfairly impact workers who work in more physically demanding
industries. These workers currently are able to retire earlier, the extension of the pension age will put heavy pressure on the bodies of these workers to be able to work to the new pension age. Whilst the government has pulled back on the removal for some categories of workers, notably police and firefighters, sewage workers, who on average die seven years earlier than other workers and 17 years earlier than managers, will lose their current early retirement. 

Finally, that workers who lose their jobs later in their working lives, who already find it difficult to obtain work, will have to face a longer period of either unemployment or underemployment prior to reaching the pension age.

Convergence of struggles
The present movement draws together separate struggles that have been occurring in France during the Macron presidency. The left has, and the more militant unions have sought to draw together and converge the existing struggles within French society into the pension struggle. This has included pre-existing workers' struggles but has also included movements of students that have campaigned against both fees and the introduction of increased university entrance requirements which has seen thousands of young people fail to gain entrance to university and the introduction of increased student fees for international students and the mobilisation of thousands of university and high school students which has seen schools and universities blockaded and the call for exams to be totally cancelled to allow the full involvement of students in the movement. This process of convergence is not new, and his been an objective of a range of militant organisations since prior to the Macron presidency, and particularly in relation to the emergence of the Front Social and the Nuit Debout during struggle against the El Khomri attacks on the Labour Law and the gilet jaunes as a new force mobilisation which, since November 2018, has drawn into motion sections of the French popular classes that unions and other progressive forces have not been able to mobilise for an extended period of time.

State and Government Responses
In response to the mass movement the state, just as it has to other mobilisation since the November 2015 introduction of the (withdrawn in November 2017) state of emergency following the terror attacks in Paris, has responded with escalating repressive violence. There has been widespread footage of CRS (Republican Security Companies) and Gendarme riot police beating protestors, as well the deployment of a range of “non-lethal” weapons, including explosive tear gas grenades (France is the only European country to deploy explosive canisters in law enforcement) and flash balls, that has seen a steady rise in the number of people who have been maimed at protests.

In addition, the government has sought to manoeuvre in the hope of dividing and blunting the movement. The tactic has been the announcement of the “temporary” withdrawal of the first phases of the increase in the Pivot Age, that had been scheduled to begin in 2022. A withdrawal that is based on finding an alternative way of saving €12 billion “in order to secure the system by 2027” - the government has proposed a conference on January 30 to identify alternative mechanisms to make savings in the pension system. The “concessions” have primarily been aimed at the conservative unions, particularly the CFDT (Confédération française démocratique du travail - French Democratic Confederation of Labour - the largest French confederation when measured by the number of members and second-largest in employee representative bodies) and UNSA (L'Union nationale des syndicats autonomes - National Union of Autonomous Trade Unions, which is the second most popular union within both the SNSF and RAPT), who have responded positively to the concessions, with CFDT general secretary Berger calling the withdrawal of the 2022 Pivot Age phase-in date a victory for the CFDT and called on CFDT members to desist from participating in strikes and mobilisations against the pension reform. However, the more militant unions have rejected the overtures of the government, arguing that legislation is not amendable and that it should be withdrawn. The CGT, in a January 11 statement said, “that debate on the Pivot Age is simply aimed at winning the support of certain unions”. Léon Crémieux, a militant in SUD Rail, the trade union Solidaires union within the SNSF and RAPT, and leader of the NPA (Nouveau parti anticapitaliste - New Anticapitalist Party), argues that the conference is a trap which “ is going to close quickly since this conference will only be able to put the “pivotal age at 64” back in the frame, forcing retirement two years later, or lengthening the number of years worked necessary to retire (43 years today)”. SUD Rail, in a statement on January 24, said it would refuse to meet with the government and would continue to mobilise its members until the withdrawal of the bill. 

 The current movement has significant weaknesses
Despite significant public support, opinion polls suggest that support for the movement has reached peaks of 65%, however, the movement has failed to not only meet that level of support but the size and breadth of the major working-class mobilisations of the past three decades.

This has meant that the current movement is substantially bigger and longer-lasting than the peak of the counter government movements of the last decade, but the movement is substantially smaller than the big movements against government attacks against the working class of the last three decades, particularly the movements of 1995, 2003, and 2010. In 1995, the movement was primarily within the public sector, and was not directly supported by the more conservative unions particularly the CFDT, but were driven by the CGT and FO (Force ouvriere - Workers Force) - however, the more militant unions were able to draw much broader layers of the working class, including significant sections of the CFDT’s membership and support base, into motion. 2003 the movement against the first employment contract, which focused on the employment rights of young workers,, was primarily driven by mobilisations by students and education workers. The 2010 movement to defend the pension system, peaked at mobilisations of 3.5 million, and seven mobilisations of more than 2 million across eight weeks, in addition there indefinite strikes in a number of industries particularly oil refining which resulted in widespread fuel shortages. However despite the larger size of these earlier movements, they at best achieved partial victories, and in the case of 2010 movement, it failed totally and demobilised on the promise that a future Parti Socialiste (PS) government would repeal the changes - which the PS government never attempted to do, instead it introduced new attacks on the unions and France’s working class. Defeats which have contributed to the current inability of the movement to spread.

At the same time the ability of the movement to sustain itself and force the government to offer “concessions” has given hope that perhaps the movement can outlast the resilience of the government or potentially capital. Importantly, the movement has been expanding, the more than 200 mobilisations across France on January 24, drew an estimated 1.3 million people onto the street up from 800, 000 on January 16. At the centre of the struggle has been the strikes within the SNCF and RATP with 45 days of strike action which ended January 24. This strike was initiated by the militant union federation within both SNCF and RATP, and was primarily built on the back of the September strike within RATP against pension reform. Other key areas have been the depth of the struggle within France’s cultural institutions particularly the Paris Opera, which has been on strike and performing at the mass demonstrations in Paris, the Louvre, and the French National Library, the blockading of oil refineries which occurred between January 8 to 11. On January 24, the CGT stated it was seeking to initiate discussions with workers in those workplaces not yet on strike, to draw them into action. This is occurring through the holding of general assemblies of workers and at the workplace and municipal level. Whilst the inability to draw the more conservative unions, particularly the CFDT consistently into the movement is a real weakness and break on the movement’s potential to mobilise, it potentially could be a strength, as it reduces the influence of the CFDT on the movement and government cannot rely on the CFDT’s sudden withdrawal from the movement, which happened in 2010 after the pension changes were passed, to undermine and demobilise the movement. This has the potential to place considerable additional pressure on the government, as it is less likely, compared to 2010, that the movement will simply evaporate following the passing of any legislation. Added to this, with the splintering of the PS in the wake of the 2017 presidential elections, it is hard for more conservative forces to advocate an electoral solution to addressing the assault on pensions.

'

The current national intersyndicale which brings together the CGT, FO, CGC-CFE (Confédération française de l'encadrement - Confédération générale des cadres - CFE-CGC), the trade union Solidaires, FSU (Fédération syndicale unitaire - Unitary Union Federation), FIDL ( Fédération indépendante et démocratique lycéenne - Independent and Democratic High School Federation), MNL (Mouvement national lycéen - National High School Student Movement), UNL (L’Union nationale lycéenne - The National High School Union), and UNEF (Union Nationale des Étudiants de France - National Union of Students of France) has called for three further days of mobilisation on January 29, 30, and 31. These days of mobilisation will be an important test as to the direction of the movement’s inertia.

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France: Impose another future - Solidaires' call for strikes and mobilisations September 20 and 21

IMPOSE ANOTHER FUTURE

The mobilizations of September may seem scattered. They respond to different issues. We believe that conditions must be created to converge them to create a sufficient balance of power. To bend the government and the bosses and propose alternatives for another future.

Several dates of mobilizations and sectoral strikes will take place in September: in the urgency all over France, September 13 at the RATP, September 16 to the public finances ... All are the fruit of the struggles against regressive policies of this government: attacks all in the same vein, public service cuts, the removal of civil servants, the deterioration of working conditions, etc. Yellow vests will also resume. The "solutions" of Macron have not extinguished the social anger that persists despite the repressions at work. Climate change and pensions are part of the battle to build another alternative.

FOR CLIMATE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE! STRIKE AND MANIFESTATIONS OF SEPTEMBER 20 AND 21!

Solidaires calls on the 20th to strike and demonstrate, to be with students, high school students, college students who are mobilizing for their future and ours. Participate in events, rallies, events, public debates, at the initiative of young people! On September 21st, new marches and disobedience actions will take place all over the country and yellow vests will also be on the street!
Let us hear our voices:

• for other transport and energy policies: to provide access to efficient public transport all over the country
• for local public services (schools, hospitals, access to water) ...)
• for an environmentally friendly agriculture and the end of pesticides that pollute nature and endanger populations.

OUR FUTURE, OUR PENSIONS! STRIKE AND MANIFESTATION ON SEPTEMBER 24!

Solidaires brings clear claims that go against a point system: it will impoverish retirees and will gradually switch to expensive private insurance systems!
We reject this system and claim:

• A starting age to 60 years maximum, and less in case of hardship,
• a replacement rate of 75% and at least the minimum wage,
• that effective equality between women and men finally be implemented!

The question of funding is the one the government wants to bury:
prosperous capitalism for the benefit of some (50 billion euros paid back to shareholders of French companies in the first half-six-months), exemptions from employer contributions, tax choices, fraud and tax evasion still favour the same, and that is why

a radical change is necessary, for the climate, for the public services, for social protection!

Let's fight to impose other choices, for another future

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France: Joint Union/Student Call for Strikes and Mobilisations on October 9

CGT – FO – Solidarity – UNEF – UNL

Map of October 9 Mobilisations

Originally published August 30 2018 For union organisations of employees, university students and high school students – the General Confederation of Labour (CGT), Workers Force (FO), Solidarity, National Union of Students of France (UNEF) and the National Union of Secondary Students (UNL) - met on 30 August 2018, a statement is necessary and is reinforced, that of an ideological policy aimed at the destruction of our social model, promoting in particular the explosion of inequalities and the breakdown of the collective rights.

This policy as well as the measures recently announced by the government, are part of a logic of individualisation which undermines solidarity and social justice, essential values of the social cohesion and undermining once again the weakest, the most precarious and the poorest.

These include: 

• threats to the rights of employees and job applicants to unemployment insurance; 
• the questioning of the right of young people to a future through the introduction of selective entry to higher education and the waste that is universal national service; 
• undermining of the public service, in particular CAP 22[1]; 
• job destruction through deindustrialisation;
• attacks on our health system; 
• The destruction of our pension system; 
• Freezing of social benefits;

The signatory organisations call on the Government to hear the multiple social expectations that have been expressed in public and the private sectors, by working people, young people, unemployed and retirees, and that it no longer be guided an obsession to decrease public spending. At a time when an explosion of dividends in France and in the world is once again being announced, it is time to pursue a policy of sharing wealth, to increase wages, pensions and the social minima.

Faced with this situation and regressive decisions in opposition to the legitimate demands of workers and youth, it is time to defend the foundations of our social model and win new rights.

That is why, the signatory organisations have decided to make October 9 a major day of day of mobilizations and strikes by unions, university and high school students.

Concerning the day of mobilization and strikes, the Trade Union Solidarity will authorise it during the meeting of its national leadership next week.

The signatory organisations invite the other trade unions and youth organisations to join them widely and be part of the mobilisation process.

Paris, 30 August 2018 

1 Public Affairs Committee 2022 report aimed at deepening the neoliberal restructuring of the French public sector with the aim of "improving" public accounts by €30 billion.

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France: Strike to Defend Pensions September 10

Inter-Union National Action on Pensions, Tuesday, September 10

Communication from the Trade Union Solidaires
July 5, 2013

Walking in the footsteps of its predecessors, the government wants to impose a new challenge to pension rights. They intend to move quickly to take advantage of the summer to make it a "dialogue" with the unions, and release the bill in September.

As the Solidarity Trade Union reaffirmed Friday, July 5 to the Prime Minister, the new attack on social rights is unacceptable, on the contrary they need to cancel the previous counter reforms - the financial resources are available. The lengthening of the contribution and qualifying periods, the flagship projects of both managements and the government will lead to later retirements and lower pensions for all!

The Trade Union Solidaires is part of the united initiative of trade unions who reject any social decline.

The Trade Union has proposed an inter-union national mobilisation by early September, aimed at building a broad front.

It will be on Tuesday, September 10, and has been the called jointly by the CGT, FO, Solidaires and the FSU.

The Board of the Pensions, the Moreau report, and the government, all highlight the need for 20 billion euros for 2020. But in 25 years, by lengthening the contribution period, the decline in the retirement age, the introduction of the discount, the indexation of pensions relative to wages, increasing the number of years taken into account for the reference wage, and the additional lower yield, € 40 billion will have already been taken out of the pockets of workers (as employed, unemployed or retired). That's it: not one quarter more, not a euro less!

We call for strengthening the united collectives that are being built in communities and build, from the united appeal of CGT, FO, Solidaires, FSU, an expanding movement against social regression.

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France: A beautiful Indian summer of social mobilization

First lessons of September-October 2010
Fred Borras
International Viewpoint December 2010

The preparation of the Woerth-Sarkozy [1] reform on pensions has generated one of the most important social mobilizations that this country has known, comparable to, if not more important than, those in November-December 1995 against the Juppe plan [2] and in spring 2003 against the Fillon reform [3], concerning pension systems. Although having as yet only a little hindsight, we can already draw some lessons from the movement…


Although he had not announced this reform at the time of his election campaign and had at that time confirmed that he would keep his commitment not to touch the legal retirement age, which was fixed at 60 years, Sarkozy made a volte-face. His bill, as adopted by Parliament, aims in particular at raising the age for retirement from 60 to 62, raising the age at which you can retire with a full pension from 65 to 67 and lengthening the duration of contributions necessary to obtain a full pension from 40 to 43 years.


To justify these radical choices, the government repeated a simple argument, that increased life expectancy would be likely to cause the bankruptcy of the French pension system. The avowed aim of saving the public pension system scarcely concealed the real one, which was to get rid of it.

The companies which want to generalize pension funds in France were not fooled. The group Malakoff Méderic, one of whose leading figures is the President’s brother, Guillaume Sarkozy, who is also one of the principal figures of the Medef [4] lobbied in favour of the reform and prepared to launch its products on a massive scale. Throughout the mobilization, tens of thousands of civil servants received mails from Préfon, an insurance organization which offers contracts for complementary pensions.

Social polarization
The public pension system in France is one of the branches of the Social Security system, whose creation, obtained after 1945, was the result of decades of social struggles. Based on solidarity, it is in the eyes of the bourgeoisie an archaism and a nonsense in a globalized capitalist world. From the point of view of the ruling classes, to destroy these remnants of solidarity is to release layers of profits which are “sleeping”. There is no doubt about it; this offensive on the sector of pensions is part of an overall plan which also threatens unemployment and sickness benefits. This is a global offensive against Social Security, whose benefits have already been reduced on several occasions. It is taking place in a context of economic crisis and is part of the austerity programme which aims at purging the system in order to restore the rates of profit.

To put an end to the “French exception”, i.e. to remodel the society of this country so as to align it with the rest of the developed capitalist world, to increase profits, that is the task that the bourgeoisie has set itself and which guides the policy of the government, which is entirely in the service of the bourgeoisie.

This reform could have gone through in the discreet silence of the salons of the Republic. The fact that it caused so much sound and fury constitutes a first victory for the partisans of the class struggle, among whom we count ourselves. It is also a first victory from the point of view of the need to make anger heard, to show the combativeness of those who refuse to pay for the crisis, all over the world. Clear about what was at stake, and yet without any guarantee concerning the possibility of forcing this right-wing government, which is “steady on its feet”, millions of workers and young people moved into action. Participation in the days of strikes and demonstrations became stronger and stronger, in spite of the government’s lies aimed at underestimating the numbers. According to the newspaper Le Monde, as a result of the turnover, 8 million people demonstrated at least once. That is quite simply colossal in a country of 65 million inhabitants. The rejection of the government project, thus expressed, was confirmed by many opinion polls. The duration of the movement was also rather exceptional, since after the scale of the first days of action in May and June, which was already surprising, the mobilization lasted even after the definitive adoption of the law.

To these many-millioned days of action was added an ongoing strike movement of hundreds of thousands of workers and young people in a certain number of sectors. It concerned ports, oil refineries, rail transport, the refuse collectors of big cities like Marseilles and Toulouse, the employees of certain local and regional authorities and tens of thousands of young people, in particular school students. The ongoing strike in these sectors was combined with the increasing number of blockades. Airports, stations, industrial and commercial zones and crossroads were in turn the target of determined demonstrators. It was a question of simultaneously raising the level of mobilization, supporting the sectors that were on strike and having an effect on the economy in order to inflict losses on employers. An unprecedented phenomenon on this scale from a qualitative and quantitative point of view, this type of action made it possible to bring down the barriers between militants of different trade-union organizations and to help foster unity between organizations and solidarity among workers and with young people.

The government made considerable efforts to defuse the discontent. Since its “pedagogy” had not been particularly effective, we saw crude operations like the aborted attempt to divert attention onto law-and-order issues or onto the Roms, who were massively stigmatized during the summer; we saw the government playing on the fear of violence by targeted repression and by invoking threats of terrorist attacks. Nothing worked. Nothing, except attrition.

The need for and difficulties of the general strike
Although the movement considerably complicated the task of the government and contributed to weakening and discrediting it, it could not prevent it from getting its reform through. That poses problems of a strategic order on which it is necessary to dwell.

Taking into account the scope of the attack and the level of determination of the government to impose it, it would have been necessary to strike much harder. Not to be satisfied with blocking this or that branch of industry but blocking the whole country. Only an ongoing general strike would have made that possible.

In spite of the conscious action of tens of thousands of workers and young people aimed at generalizing the mobilization it did not happen. Although the rejection of the government and its policies is obviously much stronger than in 1995, and although the days of action were more massive [5], the ongoing strike movement was weaker. There is not one single cause for this irrefutable fact. It is a mixture of closely related phenomena which explains it.

That relates first of all to a lack of confidence in the possibility of winning, of imposing the withdrawal of the bill. From this point of view, in certain sectors the weight of past defeats weighs negatively in the balance. Other important factors were the atomization of the working class, the extent of unemployment and precarious work, uncertainty about the future, the difficulty of “making ends meet”. It should be noted that the level of household debt is today 10 per cent higher than it was in 1995. To overcome this last factor, millions of workers must become convinced that the strike will hit their wallet less hard than the consequences of defeat, quite simply because they are convinced that victory is within their grasp.

It is also necessary to examine the attitude of the leaderships of the big trade-union confederations. Nationally, the Solidaires union [6] which defended the need for the general strike from start to finish, was isolated on this position. Not being of the same nature, neither the leadership of the main confederation, the CGT [7], nor even more so that of the second, the CFDT [8], are motivated by radicalism, the will to drive forward struggles to their maximum intensity, with the aim of inflicting, on the basis of a relationship of forces, defeats on the government. They are much more in the mould of “social dialogue”, negotiation, compromise. If unity could be forged and could last in spite of the differences between the leaderships, in spite of the effects of inter-bureaucratic competition, if the calls for mobilization were multiplied, it was above all the result of the attitude of the government, which at no point wanted to make any concessions. However it was not for lack of overtures, on the side of the Thibault-Chereque duo, who asked for the opening of negotiations, without ever demanding the withdrawal of the project. It is also because the pressure came from the base. The first tests of mobilization showed a high level of readiness for action and trade-union activists on the ground wanted to push further and harder, also being conscious that their credibility, their utility, their role, depended on it. Showing what was possible, local inter-union co-ordinating committees, for example in the departments of Puy-de- Dome, Haute-Garonne and Ardennes demonstrated greater combativeness, multiplying blockades involving workers from different sectors, adding departmental one-day strikes to those announced at a national level. These local one-day strikes were also successful, a sign that it was possible to go further.

The other weakness of the movement lies in the low level of self-organization of the struggles. Where the struggles were hardest, it was the inter-union co-ordinating committees in the workplaces which pushed the mobilizations forward and at same time kept control of their rhythms and forms. There was a generalized phenomenon: the weakness of participation in the general meetings held to decide to continue the strike or to organize the action contrasted with the massive character of participation in the one-day strikes and demonstrations. So it became impossible to get the struggle out of the cramped framework in which it was maintained, by the national inter-union coordination and in the different industries, sectors and workplaces, by teams of local trade union officials who were too timid.

It is nevertheless the case that the attractiveness of the trade unions was reinforced by this mobilization. That can be seen with the naked eye. Above all the CGT, but also Solidaires and the FSU [9] are recruiting. And that is positive. Teams of radical young trade-union militants have emerged and that is an asset for the future.

Unity and its limits
Over and above their function of defence of workers’ interests, it could also be seen that the population invested the trade unions with a political function of opposition to the government of the Right. That is logical when you see the crisis of credibility which affects the big institutional parties of the parliamentary opposition, and in the first place the Socialist Party. The SP sought to surf on the rejection of the Right in order to further its objective of a change of government in 2012 [10]. The principal leaders of the SP were present at the demonstrations, at the head of the contingent of their party. The fact that it was possible to constitute a broad front of the entire Left, political, trade-union and associative, against the Right, was a positive factor for the movement. But at the same time, the affair was difficult, so great is the proximity of the Socialists to the government on the fundamental issue. Sarkozy, Fillon and Woerth did not miss the opportunity to fustigate the duplicity of the SP, evoking the remarks of the current president of the IMF and potential socialist candidate at the future presidential election, Dominique Strauss -Kahn, in support of the reform. Nor did they have any difficulty underlining the contradictions of the SP whose principal leader, Martine Aubry, got herself in a pickle by approving the raising of the retirement age to 62 then backtracking. The PS has never demanded the withdrawal of the bill nor put forward measures for a really alternative programme, that is, one based on the sharing of wealth -and for good reason. As for the vote of the Socialist members of Parliament in favour of the provision of the law concerning the lengthening of the duration of contributions, it was a resounding admission. Some SP leaders pushed this logic to the end. In Marseilles, in the city which appeared as the “capital of the strike”, the principal leader of the local SP, Guerini, launched a joint appeal with the right-wing mayor, Gaudin, to stop the strike…

It is nonetheless the case that many militants and sympathizers of the SP took part in the movement. Like those of the other left parties, the Left Front [11], Lutte Ouvriere and the NPA. A unitary campaign of meetings, on the initiative of Attac and Copernic [12], made it possible to associate all these forces to distribute material with arguments against the law and to popularize alternative answers to the crisis to those of liberalism.

But differences also surfaced. While the generalization of the strike became the key question, the leaders of the Left Front, and above all Jean-Luc Mélenchon, conducted a battle for… the holding of a referendum. That does not only constitute an unattainable objective for various reasons, it also reveals fundamental differences with this anti-liberal and reformist current, which is regaining a certain influence in France. At the time of a full-scale political and social crisis, the leaders of the Left Front were seeking an institutional response. This way of approaching politics is based on a certain division of labour. The trade unions decide the calendar of mobilization. The parties find a political solution.

In the NPA, although we know that there exist differences of function between parties and trade unions and that these two types of organization have their specificities and their utility, we reject this mechanical and disjointed view of political action. What could be more political than the masses bursting onto the scene? What better solution than the majority of the population taking its destiny into its own hands? To affirm the need for the general strike is both to indicate the best way to win and to reinforce the political crisis, to allow it to crystallize, and solutions will appear with the overthrow of a government, with the defeat of its policies. When the opportunity to defend this solution finds the ear of hundreds of thousands of workers in struggle, then it must be done. That should not certainly be put forward in a timeless or dogmatic fashion, but it is the most reliable strategic road to revolutionizing society. It is a strategy which is verified and refined through experiences drawn from the analysis of the course of the class struggle. From this point of view, the strategy combines both the patient but constant preparation of the confrontation between the majority of the population and the privileged minority and the search for the expression, for the consolidation of majorities with ideas which are radically opposed to the very organization of the system and which prefigure the outlines of an alternative society. Without exaggerating the significance of it, the fact that a big majority of the population is ready to defend a system based on solidarity constitutes a political victory in the fifth capitalist power of the planet. Because although the government won on the institutional terrain, with the adoption of a law, although it inflicted a defeat on millions of workers who will suffer from its policies, it did not succeed in convincing. It lost on the terrain of public opinion. It lost on the idea that its policy is the only one possible, that it may not fill people with enthusiasm but that it is in the general interest. That is an invaluable gain in these times of crisis.

A discredited Right
The government of the Right comes out discredited, including in the eyes of workers who had believed in the promises of the candidate Sarkozy, who had been taken in by his electoral slogan, “work more to earn more”. In their eyes, Sarkozy is not any more the president of a better standard of living; he is the president of the rich. The Woerth-Bettencourt soap opera largely contributed to this discredit at the same time as it provided an additional reason to mobilize. While the Minister for Social Affairs was asking people to tighten their belts by an additional notch, he was demonstrating a sleazy proximity with the principal fortunes of the country. The image of corruption, of the vulgar display of wealth, of favouritism, is not very good for their standing in the opinion polls. Beyond that, it is Sarkozy himself who is the target, provoking a profound and virulent rejection. And the government reshuffle that he has just carried out changes nothing. That does not mean that his defeat in the 2012 elections is already certain. But the number of those who can no longer stomach him remaining in office has increased considerably.

A movement is also rich by its diversity. Among the demonstrators of this autumn, a certain number have decided to wait until 2012 to kick Sarkozy out, by replacing him by his Socialist challenger. But others understand well that the SP in power, with the example of what is happening in Greece, in the Spanish State and in Portugal, is another way of making the majority of the population pay for the crisis.

At the end of this movement, it is them that the NPA is addressing. In the midst of preparing its first national congress, it is working on a document which starts from the analysis of the double crisis, economic and ecological, of unparalleled scope, which the capitalist system is going through, to put forward transitional responses to this crisis. Its last National Political Council launched a call to discuss the anti-capitalist alternative. This debate does not relate only to organized political forces but also to those tens of thousands of workers and young people who are looking for an alternative to the policies of the Right and the institutional Left. To turn our backs on the Socialist sirens, on the dead end that an umpteenth version of governmental coalition with the PS would represent, is a necessity in order to open up another perspective. In this context, the NPA is working to develop frameworks of discussion that make it possible to confront different points of view as to the preparation of the next stages of the struggle and the outlines and content of an anti-capitalist alternative.

Toulouse, November 23, 2010

Fred Borras is a member of the Executive Committee of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) and a member of the Fourth International. He works as a teacher.

NOTES


[1] Eric Woerth was the minister of the Sarkozy-Fillon government who was in charge of piloting the project for the reform of pensions. Mixed up in financial scandals and profoundly unpopular, he lost his job in the government reshuffle which followed the mobilization.

[2] Alain Juppe was Prime Minister of the right-wing government, under President Jacques Chirac, in 1995

[3] Francois Fillon, currently Prime Minister, was Minister for Social Affairs in the Chirac-Raffarin government

[4] Medef is the French acronym for the Movement of Employers of France, the big employers ‘organization, whose president is Laurence Parisot.

[5] In 1995, the unions mobilized about two million demonstrators for the big days of action, compared with 3 million this time. Although lower on both occasions, the number of demonstrators according to the government estimates shows the same tendency.

[6] Solidaires (“In Solidarity”) is a minority trade-union organization, coming partly from expulsions from the CFDT at the end of the 1980s of radical trade-union militants who then set up the SUD trade unions, which became influential in certain sectors (Post Office, rail, tax offices…)

[7] The General Confederation of Labour (CGT) is the biggest trade-union organization in France (34 per cent of votes in the elections to the conciliation and arbitration boards in 2008). Led for a long time by the French Communist Party, its central apparatus became autonomous at the same time as the party was relegated to the second rank on the political scene. It has joined the European Confederation of Trade Unions (ETUC) and the International Trade-union Confederation (ITUC). Bernard Thibault, of the Federation of Railway Workers, has been general secretary since 1999.

[8] The Democratic French Confederation of Labour (CFDT), is the second-biggest trade-union organization in France (21.8 per cent of votes in 2008). It came from the radicalisation of the Catholic trade union movement (a majority split from the Catholic confederation, the CFTC, in 1964). Radical and committed to workers’ self-management in the 1960s and 1970s, it was ”re-centred” under the leadership of Edmond Maire after 1978 and expelled its radical currents from the Post and Telecommunications and Health sectors in 1988.

The CFDT supported, against those workers who were on strike, the reform of pensions in 1995, then again in 2003, which caused new departures of the radical currents of the confederation. Francois Chereque has been general secretary since 2002.

[9] Unitary Trade-union Federation (FSU), the main union of those working in education, research and culture.

[10] The next presidential and legislative elections in France will take place in 2012.

[11] The Left Front comprises in particular the French Communist Party and the Left Party. The latter was formed in 2008 from groups of militants who left the Socialist Party. Its main leader is the former senator and Socialist minister, and current MEP, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

[12] Attac is an association for popular education whose aim is to combat liberalism and to popularise arguments against liberal policies and in favour of another distribution of wealth. Copernic is a foundation whose objectives are similar.

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