Associated Press reported on November 22 that in 42 of 45 morning meetings, rail workers voted to return to work on the following day, “a tendency that continued in the afternoon, union officials said … Pockets of resistance remained in southern France where strikers held out.”

AP noted that the “special retirement reform that triggered the transport strikes struck a special chord. Under the plan, which concerns about a half-million people, employees will have to work for 40 years to qualify for full pensions compared to 37.5 years currently.

“Previous governments have reformed the pension system in increments since 1993 but left the special retirement benefits alone. Trying to retool it in 1995 led to a three-week wave of strikes widely considered the worst since the protests of May 1968 that shook the government of then-President Charles de Gaulle.”

On November 20, hundreds of thousands of public sector workers — teachers, postal staff, nurses, air-traffic controllers — staged a one-day protest in solidarity with the rail workers’ and to demand pay rises and an end to government plans to cut public sector jobs.

Agence France Presse reported the next day that the “stoppage left many schools closed, hospitals providing a minimum service, and newsagents without newspapers, adding to the popular exasperation after seven days of severe transport problems.

“Demonstrations drew tens of thousands in Rouen, Marseille, Grenoble, Lyon, and other cities. According to government figures, some 30 percent of civil servants were on strike.

“In addition protesting students disrupted classes in half of the country’s 85 universities, in a campaign against a law giving faculties the right to raise money from private companies.

“Unions representing 5.2 million state employees — around a quarter of the entire workforce — say their spending power has fallen by six percent since 2000, though the figure is disputed by the government. They also oppose plans to cut 23,000 jobs in 2008, half in education.

“Sarkozy, who has kept an unusually low profile over the last week, was expected to speak publicly in the coming days, possibly spelling out new measures to boost family budgets. A recent poll showed confidence in the president falling to 51 percent.”

AFP reported on November 23 that a “breakthrough” in the rail dispute “came after the opening of conciliation talks on Wednesday [November 21] between unions and the management of the state-owned SNCF rail company and the RATP Paris metro operator.

“The government has given a month for the talks to produce a deal acceptable to the unions, but has said it will not yield on the core of its reform plans.”

However AP reported that, “Workers were expecting generous concessions during the talks, to conclude before the end of December”. According to AFP, “the management of SNCF has put on the table a 90-million-euro a year financial package of inducements including pay rises and top-up pension schemes”.

AFP also reported that, “Most unions appear to have accepted the principle of a realignment of the [rail workers’] ‘special’ pensions systems”, and that only “the hardline Sud union”, in which members of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) play a leading role, “continued to reject any change to the status quo.

“However a statement from the RATP branch of Sud said the union leadership was continuing the strike ‘without any great conviction, and only out of respect for those members who are still pursuing the action’. It said it could join the round-table talks once the strike is definitively over.”

AP quoted French sociologist Guy Groux, of the prestigious Institute for Political Science in Paris, as saying that through the rail strikes, “the unions were able to get their demands on the negotiating table in a very public way”.

AP noted that “Sarkozy faces other protest movements, from students to civil servants who have demanded talks over salary hikes before the end of the month.”

Doug Lorimer

23 November 2007

* From: International News, Green Left Weekly issue #733 28 November 2007.

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French unions’ showdown with Sarkozy

Chloe Degois & John-Samuel Mackay

15 November 2007

Striking French rail workers voted on November 16 to extend the open-ended strike begun three days earlier, according to a Reuters report that day. This continues the campaign begun one month earlier, when strikes across France on October 18 paralysed the country’s rail, bus and subway systems for 24 hours in the first major confrontation between unions and President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Since his election in May, Sarkozy has started to implement his right-wing agenda, but the strikes by public sector workers — and the threat of more action to come — have put the focus back on workers’ struggles that have defeated conservative government policies in the recent past.

Union action over Sarkozy’s attack on the pension system for state workers is the most widely reported fight taking place. But recent weeks have also seen protests over an openly racist immigration law and discontent with schemes that reward the rich at the very same time that workers are asked to sacrifice.

The October 18 strike was called to defend the state workers’ pension system established after the Second World War. Sarkozy wants to lower pension benefits for public workers to the same level as the private sector, forcing workers in some of the most physically demanding and dangerous jobs to pay into the system for 40 years, instead of the current 37.5 years, before they can retire and collect benefits.

Fewer than one-in-12 long-distance trains ran on the day of the strike — which involved a larger proportion of rail workers than the massive upheavals of 1995 that halted a similar attack on public-sector benefits.

Other transportation workers joined the strike. Paris’ Metro subway system was shut down. More than half of workers for the gas and electricity systems walked out, as did other government workers, such as teachers.

Sarkozy has other plans in place to attack government workers. He wants to eliminate nearly 23,000 civil servants’ jobs in 2008 by not replacing retiring workers — one of the biggest cuts in state jobs this decade. Unions have announced a one-day strike for November 20 to protest this and other attacks.

Meanwhile, a strike over pay and working conditions by flight crews hit Air France in October, grounding numerous international flights for several days.

Rail workers are preparing for further action. The day after the October 18 walkout, strikes continued in some places without official support from union federations. Rail workers’ unions are now threatening an “open-ended” walkout if Sarkozy doesn’t back down.

Other aspects of Sarkozy’s right-wing program have stirred anger and protest. Last week, the National Assembly passed hotly contested immigration proposals from Sarkozy.

The law requires two months of language instruction for immigrants joining relatives already living in France and requires “French values” tests. Responsibility for policy on refugees would be shifted from the foreign ministry to a newly created department with the Orwellian name “Ministry of Immigration and National Identity”.

The most controversial provision allows the use of DNA testing on people coming to join relatives or loved ones working in France. The echoes to the laws of the Nazi collaborationist Vichy regime during the Second World War were plain. “Have we forgotten what happens when xenophobia makes use of science?” asked actor and activist Isabelle Adjani.

Since Sarkozy’s election, raids against undocumented immigrants have increased considerably. Now comes the new law — which, in a country where an estimated one-quarter of the population is from an immigrant background, is clearly aimed at distinguishing between “desirable” migrants (European) and undesirable ones (those from the former African and Middle Eastern French colonies).

Socialist Party member and the daughter of Algerian immigrants Fadela Amara, who joined the conservative government as secretary of state for urban affairs despite Sarkozy’s harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric during the campaign, is threatening to step down.

Demonstrations have been organised across France in solidarity with immigrants. On October 20, thousands of people gathered for rallies in all the major cities to protest the threat posed by the law.

Struggles are being organised on other fronts as well. Health care workers and professionals are challenging government measures to eliminate a spending deficit that they fear could lead to a “two-speed system” — with higher quality services available to the well-to-do. University professors and students are protesting the privatisation of schools and increasing social injustice within the education system.

Sarkozy, meanwhile, has made it plain where his priorities lie. Among his first acts as president was to scrap most inheritance taxes and introduce tax breaks for wealthy households investing in small companies or housing — worth an estimated 9 billion euros. His aim is to transfer wealth to the top of society, even as he and his government blame workers for the “hole in the budget”.

This is the basic source of spreading discontent in France. Leaders of the moderate Socialist Party showed their lack of inclination to fight by announcing that its members are free to participate in Sarkozy’s government. The left outside the SP remain divided and disorganised, but the fights against Sarkozy’s agenda are creating the ingredients for building a genuine left-wing challenge.

[Reprinted from the November 2 edition of US Socialist Worker.]

From: International News, Green Left Weekly issue #732 21 November 2007.