Sarkozy
terrified by French workers’
movement to defend pensions
Class
struggle is hitting France in a big way, as
Tuesday 12th and Saturday 16th October saw the seventh and eighth day
of action
to defend retirement pensions. Demonstrators in their thousands ran
down the
Paris boulevards on Saturday chanting “All together, General strike!”
Two
hundred and forty demonstrations were organized on each day across
France along
with mass strikes in transport, electricity, oil, airports, telecoms,
education, and the civil service. The unions say there were three and a
half
million demonstrators Tuesday ; the government say a million and a
quarter, but
even one of the police staff associations said the government was
fiddling the
figures.
For the first
time, students and school students
joined the pensions struggle in large numbers, concerned both about
their
parents, and that later retirement for older workers means fewer jobs
for the
young. According to polls, eighty four per cent of 18 to 24 year olds
think the
strikers are right. “Sarkozy, you're screwed, the youth is on the
street,” was
the chant in Toulouse in the South West. Two days later the number of
high
schools involved in the strike had risen from 200 to 700. As young
people moved
into action, government ministers squealed that fifteen-year-olds were
too
young to demonstrate and strike, that they must be being manipulated.
This from
a government whose justice minister recently proposed to lower to
twelve years
old the age at which a young person can be imprisoned for committing a
crime!
The movement
is not just a series of one-day strikes
controlled by union leaders. Since last Wednesday, daily striker
meetings in
the most active sectors vote each day on continuing the strike for 24
hours
more. Already, all of the twelve oil refineries in France have
taken up
these “renewable strikes”, half of the country’s trains are not
running, and
some libraries and school canteens are closed, while in other sectors
hundreds
of mass meetings are being held to decide on next steps. Lorry drivers
have
started blocking industrial zones in solidarity with the movement
despite the
fact that they themselves can retire at 55. One of the leaders of the
drivers
pointed out that drivers care about what happens to the support
and
administrative workers in transport firms, who are mostly women, and
don’t get
early retirement like the drivers do. Dockers in Marseilles have walked
out,
too and another national day of strikes and demonstrations for everyone
is
planned for Tuesday 19th.
Union members
make up under ten per cent of French
workers, though many millions more vote for union representatives as
staff reps
on works committees, and in polls 53% of the population and 60% of
manual
workers say they trust unions. The result of low union density is that
most
workplaces are only partly unionized, so regular meetings where
everyone can
express themselves and vote on the strike are essential. Such meetings
can also
make it harder for union leaders to sell out strikes.
Public
opinion is absolutely on our side - Fully 71%
of the population opposes Sarkozy’s “reform”, and that support
for the
movement rises to 87% among manual workers and routine office
workers. A
poll last week even reckoned that two thirds of the population thought
the
strike movement needed to get tougher on the government, while 53% of
the
population and 70% of manual workers wanted a general strike! This
support
needs to be transformed into active confidence to strike in those
sectors not
yet mobilized.
In France, 13
per cent of retired people are living in
poverty according to a recent Eurostat survey, as against seventeen per
cent in
Germany, and thirty per cent in Britain, where neoliberal “reforms”
have gone much
further. French workers are determined not to catch up to other
countries in
the poverty stakes. But over the last twenty years, pensions have come
gradually under attack. The official retirement age is still 60, but a
few
years back, despite being slowed by strikes, the government
managed to
force through an increase in the number of quarterly stamps needed to
get a
full pension. In 1990, thirty seven and a half years’ worth were
enough; by
2012 you will need forty one years’ worth. If you have less than this,
they
chop a bit off your pension for each year “missing”, unless you retire
at 65,
in that case you get a full pension. Sarkozy’s new law, just being
voted
through parliament, adds two years both to the official retirement age
(making
it 62) and to the age you need to retire at to get a guaranteed full
pension
(making it 67).
Sarkozy,
weakened by disgusting corruption scandals
involving his ministers (including Eric Woerth the head of
pension
reform) over the summer, is desperately looking for his “Thatcher
moment”, a moment which has eluded recent right wing governments in
France. In
1995 a month of strikes saw off a drastic attack on pensions. And most
famously, in 2006, the First Employment Contract, voted though by a
right wing
government to impose inferior working conditions on young adults under
26 years
old, was an unmitigated disaster for the government. After the law had
been
voted, a massive student movement backed up by the unions forced the
Prime
Minister into a humiliating climbdown. This happening again is
Sarkozy’s
nightmare. He has been quoted recently as saying in private “As long as
the
young people don’t get involved, I can handle the movement against my
pension
reform.” Traditionally, presidents allow their prime ministers to take
the main
responsibility for unpopular reforms, and sack them if the movement
against
gets too strong, but this time Sarkozy has put himself in the
forefront, a move
we hope to make him regret.
Union leaders
and Left parties
You might
think that with such levels of public
support, union leaders would pull out all the stops for a General
strike, but
professional negotiators don’t think like that. The main trade union
confederations have so far been united about the need for one day mass
strikes,
which has made impossible the standard government tactic of getting one
confederation on their side through minor concessions and using that
fact in
propaganda to reduce public support for the strikers. But they are not
pushing
for renewable strikes, and are calling for negotiations, not for the
simple
binning of Sarkozy’s pension law. The union leaders’ banner at the head
of
Saturday’s demonstration read “Pensions, jobs and wages are important
to
society” when it should have read “General strike to beat Sarkozy”! So
it’s up
to the rank and file to build up to a general strike, though some
regional leaders are supporting the idea.
The rock
bottom support for Sarkozy in the opinion
polls, and the fact that there are only 18 months left till the next
presidential elections, has led the Socialist Party to be more active
(though
far from central) in this movement. They have promised to reinstate
retirement
at 60 if they are elected in 2012. The Socialist Party today is like
the Labour
Party in Britain twenty years ago, deeply divided between a Blairite
wing who
would abandon even weak links with an active workers’ movement, and a
left wing
who see a mix of parliamentary action and movements on the
streets as the
best way forward to more social justice. The Blairite Dominique
Strauss
Kahn, one of the hopefuls for the Socialist Party presidential
candidacy in
2012 is presently Director General of the International Monetary Fund,
the
financial gangsters who are pushing across the world for later
retirement and
public sector cuts!
The Left
reformist “Left Party”, and the
Communist Party are actively building the movement, though many
activists are
being diverted into campaigning for a referendum on the issue of
pensions.
Since Sarkozy would only grant a referendum if he was terrified by the
power of
the movement, and if he scare him enough he will junk his reform
anyway, the
referendum idea is a waste of time. Anticapitalist groups such as the
New
Anticapitalist Party are completely committed to building for a general
strike.
Olivier Besancenot, spokesperson for the NAP said “We need a twenty
first
century version of May 1968.”
So far
Sarkozy has been forced to make minor
concessions (concerning for example women who have taken time off work
to raise
children). He has also made concessions in other areas hoping to calm
the anger
of certain parts of the population - for example an announced plan to
cut
housing benefit for students was abandoned . And a few days ago, he
announced
plans to look again at a whole raft of tax cuts for the rich instituted
only
three years back.
But the main
battle is still on. Now the attack has
been voted through parliament, the stakes are high - the unions are not
negotiating : the new law will stand or be broken. If it is broken,
Sarkozy is
unlike to survive as president beyond the next elections in 2012.
Divide and rule
All year,
Sarkozy has been using classic divide and
rule tactics and playing the racist card. Mass expulsions of gypsies
and
threats to remove French nationality from naturalized immigrants
convicted of
certain crimes have led to protest movements. Tragically, the passage
of a law
banning women wearing a “full” muslim veil from walking the streets was
supported by most of the parliamentary Left, while the far left
remained
practically silent, afraid of islamophobic sentiments among its own
supporters.
These racist tactics have had some effect, and racist attacks are on
the rise.
A sharp defeat for Sarkozy on pensions could help build a fighting Left
which
could then roll back some of the Right’s racist ploys, and encourage
united
action on the radical Left...
The movement
is still on the rise, and Friday police
thugs attacked high school students in a series of towns across France.
In
Montreuil, where I live, a high school student is in hospital having an
operation on his eye after police fired plastic bullets at students who
were
blockading their school. In other parts of France, police forced the
blockade
of oil supply depots Friday.
Only two
years ago in 2008, Sarkozy could be heard to
gloat “These days, when there is a strike in France, no-one notices. ”
He has
been made to notice now, and if a rising wave of strikes can kill his
attack on
pensions, it will be a major step forward in the defence of workers in
France,
and an encouragement for workers around the world. Already, Spain’s
recent
general strike and Greece’s mass strikes against austerity have shown
that
European workers are ready to fight.
John
Mullen
This
article was written in October 2010 for the Australian magazine Socialist Alternative