Greve 28 Avril

[GiantMonkeyMan]

There's been a general strike in France over new labour laws, most interestingly it's caused large demonstrations across the country building on the back of the Nuit Debout movement. Anyway, some pics (all from different cities from my understanding) and riot porn for y'all.


http://s32.postimg.org/4ysb371w5/greve2.jpg

http://s32.postimg.org/obf2f3j2t/greve3.jpg

http://s32.postimg.org/z877cdr2t/greve4.jpg

0AqITiyfvEQ

[GiantMonkeyMan]

The popular assemblies of the Nuit Debout and the workplace occupations that have sprung up are kinda reminiscent of '68. Interesting stuff.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ChKQLXWXEAMOo77.jpg

[Hermes]

Have there been any reports of how effective the general strike has been? I'm mostly seeing only reports from French media (badly translated using google) saying that they're largely ineffective, but obviously I don't know what degree of truthfulness is in that.

As well, to what degree are the Nuit Debout movement and the labor unrest intertwined? Most mainstream media reports seem to think they're either entirely separate or only one faction of them. How is this movement looking in comparison to, say, OWS?

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/05/12/upal-m12.html


How #UpAllNight seeks to block opposition to French labour law

By Francis Dubois
12 May 2016

Since it was launched at the beginning of April, the #UpAllNight movement is emerging ever more clearly as a political operation of sections of the petty bourgeoisie linked to the pseudo left and the union bureaucracy. It aims to channel opposition of youth entering into struggle against the French labour law, and turn it into reactionary organisations that have orbited around the ruling Socialist Party (PS) for decades. The PS thus hopes to block the development of politically conscious opposition to the PS government and a broader mobilisation of the working class against austerity.

Far from being a spontaneous expression of opposition to the labour reform, the practice of occupying city squares, starting with the Place de la République in Paris, was the result of a conscious initiative that received massive media attention and promotion. It was initiated by a group around the satirical newspaper Fakir, led by its editor, the media personality François Ruffin, after the largest demonstration against the labour law on March 31. From the beginning, the movement was based on publicising the ideas of the nationalist economist Frédéric Lordon.

Behind a fraudulent façade of political neutrality opposing parties and leaders, various operatives from the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA), the Left Front, the Greens, NGOs, and the trade unions were going into action. The leaderships of these parties all hailed the creation of the movement and its related Twitter hash-tag, #UpAllNight.

Aiming to exploit the hostility of large sections of the population towards the attacks on democratic rights by the ruling elite, the movement promoted the myth of “direct democracy” existing outside of the class struggle, consisting of open “General assemblies” allowing the “street” to express itself.

#UpAllNight activists organised commissions in which various issues were discussed—the formation of new bourgeois institutions (the “constitutive processes”), political economy (“souverainisme,” that is to say economic nationalism), ecology, and feminism.

The movement was from the outset hostile to mobilising the working class against the labour law. Ruffin and Lordon stated that they were indifferent to the outcome of the struggle against the law. Discussing the law at Tolbiac University, Lordon said, “We do not in any way demand that it be modified or rewritten, we do not demand rights, we do not demand anything at all in fact.”

This amounts to politically criminal complacency about a law that would have a devastating impact on workers’ jobs, wages, and conditions—lengthening working times, undermining job security for young workers, and allowing the trade unions to negotiate contracts violating the Labour Code.

Ruffin makes clear his contempt for the working class in Fakir, in which he defends the interests of the petty bourgeoisie. He says the petty bourgeoisie should use the working class to defend its specific interests under capitalism.

A few weeks before launching #UpAllNight, he explained: “As long as we march separately, we risk being screwed. One of the lessons of my film [Merci Patron!, or Thank you, boss!] is to say that if the petty bourgeoisie I represent does not come together with the popular layers represented in the film by the Klurs, one cannot disturb the [oligarch] Bernard Arnault.”

Lordon, who was widely applauded in #UpAllNight assemblies, defends economic nationalism and insists on the central role of the bourgeois state which he wants to reinforce. Le Monde listed his proposals: “a state default on its debts, exit from the euro currency, state takeovers of bankrupt banks and the regulation of foreign trade,” a policy that under capitalism can only be applied through dictatorial measures. These positions align Lordon with nationalist economist Jacques Sapir, who has proposed an alliance between the neo-fascist National Front and the souverainiste (explicitly economic-nationalist) forces around the PS, such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the Left Front.

It is no accident if one sees occasional visits at #UpAllNight rallies of members and even banners of far-right groups.

One of the main tendencies is that of the “constituent citizens,” who have their own commission. They discuss essentially about a reform of capitalist institutions. Speaking to Le Monde diplomatique, Xavi Lespinet, a defender of “constituent citizenship” who works at the Barcelona paper El Critic, said: “We consider that the current institutional system is outmoded, that no real transformation of the context can be produced in it, that it must be totally redone, to re-democratise it, and to make possible within it significant political differences.”

These proposals have nothing to do with a defense of democratic rights within the context of a struggle against capitalism. They simply amount to proposals to the financial aristocracy to make some concessions to the layers of the affluent middle class that consider that they do not profit enough from the exploitation of the working class. By creating a new “context,” they aim essentially to organise a “better” distribution of the profits—that is, one more favourable to themselves.

This is the common denominator of all the similar projects, from the calls for a Sixth Republic from Mélenchon or the theories of Etienne Chouard, whose links with the far right are well known. Chouard recently applauded Lordon’s positions on the issue of launching a constituent assembly.”

The issue of a "general strike" has also been made the topic of a commission at the #UpAllNight meeting on Republic Square in Paris.

The organisation that first raised this issue is the Morenoite faction of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) that publishes the misnamed “Révolution permanente” web site. This group, whose former Latin American leader Nahuel Moreno sent it in the 1960s into the international Pabloite tendency whose French representative was the Revolutionary Communist League, the NPA's predecessor, defends the petty-bourgeois nationalist Castro regime in Cuba. It has long functioned in Argentina as a wing of a nationalist and populist movement built around the late President Juan Perón.

The forces that supposedly aim to organise this “general strike” are unions that are all, including the Stalinist General Confederation of Labour (CGT), publicly on record as supporting modifications to the labour reform negotiated with the PS. They have all refused to mobilise the working class against the brutal repression of the youth by police.

They are calling for a “renewable” strike instead of an unlimited one, which would rapidly produce a confrontation between the working class and the PS government. A “renewable” strike is a one-day strike that must be re-approved each day and at each workplace, during which time the government stays in power. It does not unify but atomises the working class. It guarantees that no long-term strategy against President François Hollande’s government will be discussed.

It is conceived as a way for the union bureaucracies to call for minor modifications to the law, without changing the essentials. This is why CGT leader Philippe Martinez enthusiastically backed it when he spoke at an #UpAllNight meeting on April 28.

It aims to give a false veneer of working class radicalism to pro-business trade unions, and of internationalism to nationalist petty bourgeois groups, to try to demoralise workers who strike.

Révolution permanente also specifically defends Lordon, claiming that the ruling class is seeking to discredit him. One article on its web site argues for economic nationalism and the nation-state as the context inside which opposition “of the oppressed and the poor” develops.

For the Hollande government, it is clear not only that #UpAllNight poses no danger to the PS, but that it helps create a media buzz that creates enthusiasm among sections of the youth. It blocks a fundamental political and historical discussion on the necessity of socialism, the mobilisation of the working class through a mass political strike, and the issue of state power.

On April 14, Hollande declared, “I think it is legitimate that the youth, today, given the world as it is, politics as it is, wants to express itself, have its say ... I will not complain that a section of the youth wants to invent the world of tomorrow.”

On April 29, Bernard Cazeneuve, the interior minister directly responsible for police brutality against youth protesters, defended the movement against demands from the FN and the right-wing The Republicans that the movement be banned.

While #UpAllNight square occupations have been set up in other cities across France, attempts to set them up in working class suburbs of the major cities have failed in the face of the distrust and even overt hostility of the population. Le Monde repeatedly reported how union and pseudo left activists, materially supported by Stalinist and other municipalities, tried to attract workers and youth in these areas. “The #UpAllNight movement struggles to move into the suburbs,” it wrote on April 14, observing on April 24 that “In Marseille, #UpAllNight is colliding with the harsh reality of the northern districts.”

News magazine Le Point indicated on May 1 something of the relationship that exists between #UpAllNight and the population: “Thursday, Philippe Martinez spoke there the first time to propose “a convergence of struggles,” though at the time 63 percent of the population considers that neither #UpAllNight, nor the trade unions, nor the parties are “aligned with the workers,” according to an Odoa poll Friday. On the other hand, seven Frenchmen in ten consider that “the class struggle is a reality in France today.’’

It is the international class struggle, and not the political received ideas of the petty bourgeoisie promoted by #UpAllNight, that is driving millions of youth and workers in France and worldwide into struggle. Their struggles against the discredited social order defended by the European Union and in France by the PS government and its political satellites has only begun. They are moving inevitably towards a confrontation between the working class and the capitalist oligarchy, posing the question of power, and of building workers’ states through international socialist revolution.

These struggles can only advance, however, by taking the struggle out of the hands of the trade unions and opposing to the reactionary protectionism of the souverainistes, the internationalist perspective of the United Socialist States of Europe, breaking decisively with the nationalist and petty bourgeois perspectives of the groups linked to #UpAllNight.

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[ckaihatsu]

http://www.marxist.com/french-qsocialistq-government-uses-emergency-powers-to-impose-labour-law-counter-reform.htm


French "socialist" government uses emergency powers to impose Labour Law counter-reform

Written by Jorge Martín Wednesday, 11 May 2016
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On Tuesday, May 10th, French PM Valls was forced to use emergency powers under article 49.3 of the constitution to pass the hated El Khomri labour law, as a rebellion in the ranks of the Socialist Party parliamentary group had made it impossible to get the necessary votes to pass it in parliament.

http://www.marxist.com/images/stories/france/thumbnails/thumb_nuit-debout-twitter-pic.jpg
There were spontaneous protest gatherings outside the national assembly (see picture) and in other cities around the country to protest this violation of normal "parliamentary democracy". In Paris the call came from the #NuitDebout movement, as well as local trade union branches. Protesters were enraged at what they rightly considered a violation of democracy and chanted slogans like “National Assembly, Capital’s Assembly - the real democracy is here [on the streets].”

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CiHL49WWEAAlQPI.jpg:large
Nuit Debout ‎@nuitdebout

La rue elle est a qui, elle est à nous !#NuitDebout #LoiTravail #OnVeutMieuxQueCa
12:36 PM - 10 May 2016

188 188 Retweets
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In Toulouse a joint appeal from the unions and the local #NuitDebout managed to gather over a thousand people at very short notice.

https://twitter.com/i/videos/tweet/730098952280903681?embed_source=clientlib&player_id=0&rpc_init=1&language_code=en

Hundreds gathered in other cities like Lyon, Marseille, Strasbourg, Tours, Rennes, Nantes, Caen, Grenoble, Montpellier, etc.

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Finally, the law was passed without a vote through the use of article 49.3. The move reflects the extreme weakness of the government in the face of mass opposition against the law, including 4 national days of action on March 9th and 31st, and April 9th and 28th. The Financial Times commented: “The drastic move underlines Mr Hollande’s political weakness and the tensions tearing apart the left a year before presidential elections.” The movement against the counter reform of the labour law has mobilised hundreds of thousands of workers and youth, becoming the focal point for opposition against a government of the “Left” carrying out right wing austerity policies.

http://twitter.com/nuitdebout/status/730095745295069186/photo/1
Nuit Debout ‎@nuitdebout

Ca sent le Ga(tta)z devant l' @AssembleeNat
Rendez-nous notre démocratie !#NuitDebout #LoiTravail
1:02 PM - 10 May 2016

100 100 Retweets
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In this case, as previously in Greece, we see how the enforcement of brutal austerity policies to make the workers pay the price for the crisis of capitalism enters directly into conflict even with the limited character of bourgeois democracy. The response should be not so much that we want to restore bourgeois democracy to its full meaning, but rather to understand that real democracy is not compatible with the dictatorship of Capital.

The only way now to stop the El Khomri “reform” from coming into law is a motion of censorship against the government which has been tabled by the right wing and has to be discussed on Thursday. The "Socialist" government hopes to blackmail left critics of the law and rebels in its own parliamentary group into not voting with the right wing opposition, but it is not clear what will happen. The leader of the Front de Gauche, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has said that he would like to see a motion of censorship proposed by the left, but if that is not possible, he calls on all deputies opposed to the law to vote in favour of the censorship proposed by the right. Some rebel socialist deputies have indicated their willingness to vote against the government. The PS leaders have threatened anyone voting against with expulsion from the party and a ban from standing on the party's ticket in the election.

Trade unions and student organisations have called for yet another national day of action and strikes on Thursday May 12th, and threaten more action on the 17th and 19th. However, the strategy of the union leaders is one of calling for an endless succession of "days of action" and 24h strikes, with the aim of wearing down the whole movement. After 4 such national days of action, it is clear that the government will not back down unless it is faced with action that is stronger.

The trade union statement (signed jointly by CGT, FO, FSU and Solidaires and the student organisations UNEF, FIDL, UNL) is extremely vague in this respect. It talks of the need to “amplify and strengthen the mobilisation” but says nothing specific about how to do so. It “invites” the local branches to “organise mass meetings with the workers to debate what kind of actions, about strike and about its all out character”. Instead of giving a clear lead, the trade union “leaders” are passing the bucket to the trade union activists in each factory and workplace. This is the opposite of leadership.

The statement further says that the trade union “do not rule out any kind of initiatives for the following weeks, including a national demonstration” and adds that the organisations will meet “at the beginning of next week” to decide on that. This is hopeless as the law has already been passed by government yesterday and now depends on a motion of censorship to be debated tomorrow. Next week will be too late!

Only the development of a powerful all out strike movement can turn the situation around. The mood amongst the worker, and particularly the youth, is very angry. The provocation of passing the law by decree could spark such a movement.

Home » Europe » France

[ckaihatsu]

Writing that a “pre-civil war situation is emerging in France,” Le Figaro editorialist Ivan Rioufol blamed this situation on opposition to capitalism, which he equated with Islamism. He deplored “violent opposition to the model of Western society, capitalist and liberal. This rejection is shared both by the radicalised left and political Islam...


I'll note that any shared opposition to the Western status quo, by both leftism and Islamism, is merely *incidental*, and is not *congruent* between the two in any way -- political Islam, as from ISIS / the Islamic State, is actually *competitive* with the Western nation-state, while revolutionary leftism seeks to *supersede* capitalism and all of its nation-states, worldwide, through *proletarian revolution*.


---


http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/05/19/psfn-m19.html


French government backs neo-fascist protest against opposition to labor law

By Alex Lantier
19 May 2016

On Wednesday the Alliance police union, which is close to the neo-fascist National Front (FN), called protests on squares across France previously occupied by the #UpAllNight movement, which criticises the Socialist Party's (PS) regressive labour law.

Several top FN leaders attended the protests. On the pretext of opposing “anti-cop hatred,” the protest aimed to intimidate opposition to the labour law, which the vast majority of the population still opposes even after the PS rammed it through the National Assembly without a vote last week. The labour law lays the groundwork for slashing workers’ wages, benefits and working conditions.

This unprecedented far-right protest testifies to the accelerating disintegration of democracy in Europe. Though it was a definitely pro-FN protest, it had not only the organisational and political support of the PS government, but the participation of the Left Front and trade unions close to #UpAllNight, including the General Confederation of Labour (CGT). These forces, terrified of rising working class opposition to austerity across Europe and particularly against their longtime ally, the PS, are aligning themselves with the far right against the workers and youth.

Before the Alliance protest planned for noon on Republic Square in Paris, on-duty paramilitary police set up blockades on avenues leading to the square, which had been abandoned by the organizations that occupied it to set up the #UpAllNight movement. The Paris prefecture blocked access to the square via the subway. The police guards blocked access to the square to everyone except police, their friends, a few journalists and politicians—principally, though not exclusively, from the FN.

As a few hundred police occupied the square, the paramilitaries guarding it taunted youth who wanted to go onto the square to protest the Alliance demonstration. Under the terms of the state of emergency, the prefecture also banned a counter-demonstration called against police violence, claiming that it posed a “serious risk of grave disturbances to public order.”

Monday, the prefecture also issued a ban on 18 members of an anti-fascist organisation from participating in anti-labour law demonstrations this week. The prefecture did not claim they had attacked police, and indeed they had not been arrested, but it nonetheless banned them from “remaining” in demonstrations, citing special powers under the state of emergency. This follows the “preventive” arrest of dozens of other demonstrators by the PS.

FN legislator Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, the niece of FN leader Marine Le Pen, and a leading FN lawyer, Gilbert Collard, attended the Alliance protest. They refused to take journalists' questions, saying they would “not do PR.” However, Marine Le Pen published a communiqué supporting the demonstration and demanding more emergency powers for police.

The communiqué, titled “The National Front supports police,” declares: “Ending the impunity that too many delinquents enjoy to apply zero-tolerance methods, reinforcing the staff and equipment of our security forces, creating a presumption of self-defense for police—that is the National Front's plan to support our police and thus to restore the authority of the Republic.”

Several leaders and allies of the right-wing The Republicans (LR) and of the Left Front attended the protest on Republic Square alongside the neo-fascists: Eric Ciotti and Geoffrey Didier of LR, the economic nationalist politician Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, and Eric Coquerel, a regional councilor of the Left Party founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Alliance demonstrations were held in dozens of other cities across France including Lyon, Nice, Strasbourg, Mulhouse, Lille, Calais, Rennes, Montpellier and Caen.

The PS government reacted by applauding all the security forces. President François Hollande began a cabinet meeting yesterday by addressing “a clear message of support to all of the security forces in this difficult context.”

As for Manuel Valls, the prime minister and former interior minister, he issued a statement on Twitter implying that any confrontation with the security forces was a declaration of war on the French nation: “Police and gendarmes protect our citizens and institutions every day. Attacking them means attacking all of us.”

The neo-fascist protest went ahead also with the support of CGT President Philippe Martinez. Asked whether he condemned violence against the police forces and if the CGT would join the protest against “anti-cop hatred,” he replied in the affirmative.

“Of course we condemn all violence … [including] from those who are called delinquents, who are very small in number but who create an incredible amount of damage,” he said. “That is why the CGT police unions will also protest on Wednesday,” he added.

The reactions of the PS, the CGT and the Left Front to the Alliance protests are a serious warning to the workers and youth in France and internationally. They vindicate the WSWS' consistent opposition to all the pseudo-left groups operating on the periphery of the PS.

Eight years of global economic crisis and deep austerity have not only devastated European society and impoverished broad layers of workers and youth, they have undermined existing political parties. Across Europe, social democratic parties and their political and trade union allies are discredited and hated by masses of people. The mechanisms of “social dialog,” whereby business groups and the trade unions for decades negotiated in order to provide the illusion of consensus around social cuts demanded by big business, are collapsing.

Opposition to austerity, war and anti-democratic law-and-order measures is broadly shared among workers. Nonetheless, the working class faces one main obstacle: it is entering into struggle without revolutionary leadership, under conditions where no party speaks for the working class. The parties that for decades dominated what passed for “left” politics have proved totally hostile to the workers.

In this context, the bourgeoisie, staggered by the political collapse of the PS and Hollande's inability to finish off opposition to the austerity measures it is demanding, is contemplating what alternatives to bourgeois democracy might allow it to impose the economic policies it wants by force. The state of emergency imposed in France after the November 13 attacks in Paris proved to be a trial balloon for a move towards dictatorship aiming to crush social opposition in the working class.

Workers in France face the necessity of launching a political struggle against the PS government not only to oppose war and austerity, but also to defend basic democratic rights. Bourgeois commentators, for their part, are declaring quite openly and provocatively that they are preparing themselves for conditions of civil war and counterinsurgency in France itself.

Writing that a “pre-civil war situation is emerging in France,” Le Figaro editorialist Ivan Rioufol blamed this situation on opposition to capitalism, which he equated with Islamism. He deplored “violent opposition to the model of Western society, capitalist and liberal. This rejection is shared both by the radicalised left and political Islam... Civil war is already in the hearts and minds of the Islamo-leftists and their collaborators, who claim that they are acting in self-defense in the face of a criminal police force.”

Free-market commentator Nicolas Baverez wrote a column in the German paper Die Welt declaring that in “2017, France will have to choose between reform or an attempt at revolution, which threatens to go in the direction of the far right.”

Copyright © 1998-2016 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/05/20/prot-m20.html


Strikes and protests mount against French labour law

By Kumaran Ira
20 May 2016

As strikes and protests mount across France, social opposition to the unpopular labour reform imposed last week by Socialist party government without a parliamentary vote by using article 49.3 of the French constitution last week, is escalating. The pro-business law allow unions and bosses to negotiate contracts violating France’s Labour Code, lengthen the work week, facilitate mass sackings, and undermine job security for young new hires.

Denouncing the PS government’s regressive reforms and anti-democratic method, hundreds of thousands of workers and youth protested the law for the second time this week yesterday. According to trade unions, 100,000 marched in Paris and 90,000 in Marseille. Between 1,000 and 6,000 marched including in Saint-Nazaire, Le Havre, Rouen,Bordeaux, Lyon, Toulouse and Strasbourg, according to police. In Nantes, 800 people took part in a banned demonstration.

Sections of workers also entered into struggle, with truck drivers, transport workers and air traffic controllers mounting strikes this week. Truck drivers continue to blockade strategic part of highways nationwide, including access to the airport of Toulouse-Blagnac in the Southwest.

In Marseille, truck drivers blocked roads near the industrial zone of Fos-sur-mer. In the west, blockades were set up in Rennes and Nantes.

Six of eight France’s oil refinery operation, including Total's operations in Donges, are disturbed by blockades, causing shortages in petrol stations. Near Le Havre, two refineries were blocked. In La Rochelle, the access to oil terminals were blocked. In northwestern France, some 70 Total petrol stations were out of fuel, almost a fifth of the network.

Yesterday train services were reduced by more than 50 percent by a second straight day of strikes. The strike by air traffic controllers disturbed the traffic with the cancellation of flight, including at Paris Orly airport.

As social anger mounts against the law, President FrançoisHollande’s government is resorting to police repression against protesters after endorsing a protest mounted by the Alliance police union together with the neo-fascist National Front (FN) on Wednesday.

Yesterday, security forces violently attacked protesters. In Lyon, police used water cannon to try to push back protesters. In Rennes, police arrested 19 people in the subway they have placed in custody for “degradation” of public goods. In Nantes, the security forces used tear gas to prevent protesters from reaching the center of the city, behind the castle of the Dukes of Brittany.

1,300 people have reportedly been arrested during weeks of protest and 819 people have been held in custody, including some 51 with harsh sentences. Protesters told WSWS reporters in Amiens of a 22-year-old female law student, Manon, now facing charges for allegedly assaulting riot police during a peaceful occupation of the town of Amiens by the #UpAllNight movement on April 28. Prosecutors are demanding a five-year prison sentence.

Defying police repression, workers and students vow to continue fighting the law, denouncing the Hollande government’s anti-democratic method to impose the law to pursue the attack on social and democratic rights of the working class.

A high-school student and a friend of Manon, Mathilde, told the WSWS, “I want to tell your readers that we are determined to continue until the law is withdrawn, and we expect more people to join us. With 49-3, the government is trying to use force, it doesn’t care what we think. It is completely killing the principle of democracy.”

WSWS reporters in Paris spoke to Romain and Pierric, two young workers in the demonstration at the Place de la Nation. They denounced the imposition of the labor law using article 49-3: “It’s ridiculous ... it’s a scandal. They have no strategy, they just do everything business wants. They have no way to argue for their rotten law, so they just try to ram everything through.”

They said that they were not surprised by the fact that the PS and its pseudo-left ally Left Front backed the protest organised the Alliance police union with the FN’s support. They added, “Now they are just going all-out with repression, their goal is to discourage protests, and to demoralise protesters so they do not mobilise ... They are willing to use any trick, of course, including the FN, it is not as if they had principles or ethics.”

Workers and student also face threats and attacks from pro-PS trade unions that feel compelled to organise protests to prevent social opposition from escaping their control and developing into a challenge to the PS.

In Marseille, a student, told the WSWS that the the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) personnel had attacked them when they were blocking a highway, adding, “Democracy is more and more under attack, the 49-3 disgusts me.”

Malia, another student, also criticized the CGT for attacking youth in the demonstrations: “The CGT tear-gassed us, they use violence with us even when we are being gassed by the riot police. They don’t let us shelter with them during the protests to be safer. So we are isolated, we get frustrated, and we want to be more independent.”

The struggle must be taken out of the hands of the unions and their student union allies, and develop into a broader struggle of the entire working class in France and across Europe against austerity, war, and the state of emergency.

The PS government will not give up the labor law despite growing anger, and workers and youth cannot rely to oppose it on the unions and pseudo-left parties like the New Anti-capitalist Party, who work closely with the PS. If the struggle remains under the influence of these petty bourgeois organisations, which have no base of support in the working class, the struggle against the law will be sold out ultimately.

The PS on its part is signaling that, having passed its law, it intends to press ahead and prepare even further crackdowns against protests. Yesterday, Prime Minister Manuel Valls urged unions leaders to “take responsibility” to call off protests against the labor law. He claimed that turnout was waning and denounced protesters for attacking police.

He demanded that protests cease, stating, “If on each protest there are delinquents today, we must ask whether some of these protests are really justified. Anyway, [trade union] security staffs, working of close with the support of the police, must take all measures to prevent delinquents from joining in with the crowd of demonstrators.”

Valls also threatened to use police forces to smash roadblocks set up by truck drivers, urging the CGT to show “responsibility” on this issue.

Copyright © 1998-2016 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved