Strike wave against austerity spreads in France, Belgium

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http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/05/26/fran-m26.html


Strike wave against austerity spreads in France, Belgium

By Kumaran Ira
26 May 2016

As strikes and occupations continue in France against the reactionary labor law imposed earlier this month by the Socialist Party (PS) government, despite attacks on strikers by riot police, protests and walkouts against austerity are breaking out in neighboring Belgium. On Tuesday, some 60,000 workers marched in Brussels against the austerity measures of the conservative government of Prime Minister Charles Michel.

The Brussels demonstration targeted planned cuts to the welfare system, budget cuts in public service and education, and a labor reform allowing bosses to introduce a 45-hour work week and impose overtime without extra pay.

Prior to Tuesday's protest, the Michel government reinforced draconian security measures imposed after the March 22 terrorist attack in Brussels. It is now clear that the Belgian government, which ignored forewarnings from foreign intelligence agencies concerning the identity and plans of the March 22 attackers, is using the security measures to repress domestic opposition from the working class. Riot police used water cannon and tear gas against Tuesday’s protest, injuring several people. Ten people were reportedly arrested.

The growing movement against austerity in Belgium coincides with an escalating wave of strikes in France. The regressive PS labor law allows companies to negotiate with trade unions to lengthen the work week up to a maximum of 46 hours and to cut wages. It also eases the conditions for laying off workers. The law, overwhelmingly opposed by workers and youth, is widely seen as an illegitimate attack on workers' social rights won through decades of struggle.

In France, strikes are occurring at oil refineries and ports and in civil aviation, rail, energy, transport and construction. Nationwide protests will take place today, after thousands of people participated in protest on May 19.

A week-long oil strike is paralyzing the French economy and causing widespread fuel shortages. Thirty percent of France’s 12,000 gas stations are reportedly out of fuel or close to it.

The PS government has responded by hypocritically denouncing protesting workers. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that “democracy is being taken hostage by a minority.”

This is a brazen and provocative lie. It is the PS government that is behaving like a dictatorship, pushing through the socially regressive law without a parliamentary vote in the face of overwhelming popular opposition, employing the emergency powers provisions of the anti-democratic Article 49.3 of the French Constitution to do so.

A large majority of the population holds President François Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls responsible for the social tensions and the industrial disruptions caused by the strikes. An Elabe survey published yesterday found that nearly 70 percent of the population support having the PS, and not the strikers, back down by withdrawing the labour law.

The strikes are undermining the PS government, triggering a deep crisis and calls for withdrawing the law, even from within the PS itself. Bruno Le Roux, head of the PS faction in the National Assembly, called on the government to rework the labor law. He particularly singled out Article 2, which allows the trade unions to sign and implement contracts violating the Labor Code and the requirement for industry-wide agreements.

Valls opposed this proposal in the parliament, claiming that there would be “neither a withdrawal of the law nor questioning of Article 2, as it is the heart of the philosophy of the bill.”

Instead, the PS government is determined to use police repression to crush strikes and blockades by oil workers.

After sending riot police on Tuesday to attack workers blockading the oil refinery at Fos-sur-Mer near Marseille, police intervened yesterday to reestablish access to a key fuel depot at Douchy-les-Mines near Valenciennes in northern France. The depot had been blocked by members of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) and Solidaires unions since May 19.

The attack on Tuesday began around 5 a.m., as 20 police trucks converged on the refinery and riot police used water cannon to dislodge 80 workers who were blocking access.

Despite the police repression, strikes are spreading throughout France’s oil facilities. The country's eight refineries are all affected by strike action. The Total refinery at Feyzin near Lyon and Total's Normandy plant have stopped production. The Grandpuits facility near Paris will soon come to a complete halt and Donges, close to Nantes, will shut down several units, while La Mède of Fos-sur-Mer and Lavéra in the Marseille region are working at a reduced rate. Dozens of oil depots, out of a total of 78 in France, are also blocked.

With fuel shortages worsening, the government has begun releasing portions of its strategic fuel reserves. Francis Duseux, president of the French oil industry group UFIP (Union Française des Industries Petrolières), told RMC radio: “Over the last two days, since we had problems with the refining operations and blockades of fuel depots, we began, together with the public authorities, to use the reserve stocks.”

Terrified by the protests, ruling circles are calling for the government to trample on the constitutionally protected right to strike and force employees back to work. The right-wing opposition Republicans (LR) asked the PS to requisition oil workers and legally compel them to return to work. MP Eric Ciotti said, “We must requisition them, as [conservative President] Nicolas Sarkozy did in 2010. It is in the national interest. We cannot leave the country blockaded by a small minority.”

In the meantime, strikes are erupting in other French industries against the labor law. The CGT-Energy federation has called for strike action at the French state electricity company EDF and is planning site blockades to cut electricity production. This would lead to power cuts across the country. Yesterday, workers at France’s 19 nuclear plants, including Nogent-sur-Seine southeast of Paris and Gravelines in the north, voted to go out on strike on Thursday.

Unions at the French National Railway (SNCF) called strikes for yesterday and today, and the CGT issued a notice of strike action, renewable daily, starting from May 31. Indefinite strike action has been called at Paris transport system (RATP) against the PS labour law and poor working conditions and wages, starting from June 2.

Airport workers, including air traffic controllers, administrative staff, engineers and technicians are on strike today, causing the cancellation of flights at several airports. A nationwide strike is planned between June 2 and June 5 involving air traffic controllers and civil aviation workers to protest against the labor law and the drop in staff numbers.

Port and dock workers are also entering into struggle, with dockers at Marseille and Le Havre, which handles 40 percent of French imports, voting to strike until Friday to protest police repression on Tuesday at the Fos-sur-Mer oil facility.

Since Monday, Marseille dockers have refused to unload goods, including crude and refined petroleum products, headed to refineries. Some 29 ships carrying crude oil were still stranded yesterday as the CGT called a work stoppage until Friday at the public Marseille port facilities as well as at Fluxel, the private operator that manages two oil terminals.

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http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/06/01/belg-j01.html


Belgian public sector goes on strike in run-up to French rail walkout

By Ross Mitchell and Alex Lantier
1 June 2016

Public sector workers in Belgium organised in a 24-hour national strike Tuesday, as French rail workers began indefinite strike action yesterday evening. Workers are mobilising across national borders in Europe against the reactionary austerity policies that the entire European Union (EU) has imposed on workers since the 2008 financial crisis.

While French workers are mobilising in struggle against the Socialist Party’s (PS) regressive labour law, the right-wing government of Belgian prime minister Charles Michel intends to impose welfare cuts and budget cuts in public service and education as well as to raise the pension age. The Belgian government’s aim is to make it easier for employers to hire part-time workers on short-term, part-time contracts with less security. Its proposed laws introduce a 45-hour workweek and impose overtime without extra pay.

The Belgian strike was called by several trade unions, including the General Confederation for Public Services (CGSP); it coincided with a train drivers stoppage that entering its sixth day. Belgian train drivers are opposing cuts in overtime pay.

The whole Belgian public sector was heavily disrupted due to strike action taken by workers in the health sector, public transport, postal services, fire service, education and other areas. Operations of the state-run SNCB (National Railway Company of Belgium) were paralysed in the Francophone areas, while in Flanders only 50 percent of trains were servicing their lines. Some services to Paris and German cities were delayed or cancelled.

Mainline trains and buses in Brussels and the French-speaking region of Wallonia were paralysed. In the capital, Brussels, metro lines, trams and buses were affected for the second time in a week, while rubbish went uncollected.

In other towns and cities, metro and tram networks were also halted. In Charleroi, a city with a long history of working class struggle dating back more than a century and a half, workers voted not to allow trains, buses or trams to run.

At 9 a.m., striking workers gathered to demonstrate in Brussels, after a protest of at least 60,000 people in that city on May 24. The Confederation of Christian Trade Unions claimed 12,000 marched in Brussels. A self-made banner floating along the marching crowds in Brussels read, “No more of our sacrifices for your privileges.” Others read, “Fighting for our rights.”

Other marches took place nationwide with 1,000 protesting in Ghent, 350 in Namur, 400 in Wavre and 1,500 in Mons. Wavre is the location of Prime Minister Michel’s residence. During the strike, it was protected by a heavy security and police cordon.

On Monday, three Flemish unions and one Francophone union reached agreement with Belgium’s justice minister, Koen Geens, in an attempt to end a five-week strike of prison officers. Geens pledged Monday to hire more prison officers, after which the unions ended their participation in the strike. Two other unions are yet to settle.

Commenting on the duration of the rail strike, the Le Soir newspaper commented, “This is unseen since the last general strike of 1986.”

While the ruling elite is deeply concerned at the escalating militancy in the working class internationally, and in particular in both Belgium and France, it is also well aware that the trade union bureaucracy is an ally against the workers.

The Belgian trade unions called on their members sector by sector to participate in the strike. They did not issue a call to mobilise workers across the whole public sector. Teachers were allowed to strike, but the Belgian teachers union did not mobilise its members. Trade unions in the airport industry did not call on their members to join the general strike, though workers joined the movement on an individual basis without affecting business operations. Airports in Brussels and in the country were not affected by the strike.

Le Soir cited the comments of journalist Bernard Demonty, who stated, “Not a single trade union movement made any government step down from power” in Belgian history. The article continues, “To make the government fall [Demonty says], one needs a general strike to the end. This cannot be so, for the trade unions are divided and not determined for it.”

In France, rail workers will be joined by airline workers and pilots on strike in the coming days. At the same time, six of the country’s eight oil refineries remain on strike, with 20 percent of French gas stations running out of gas. Refuse workers have launched strikes and blockades of facilities in Paris and St. Etienne.

Pilots from France’s National Union of Airline Pilots (SNPL) voted for long-term strike action on Monday, as they face a substantial pay cut after the SNPL sold out their strike at the end of 2014.

French officials tried to minimise the scope of the strike, with Transport Minister Alain Vidalies declaring, “Of course the movement will be serious, but it won’t have the scope one might expect.” Nonetheless, the rail strike clearly will have a significant impact, shutting down most lines on Paris’s express regional transit system as well as many long-distance high-speed trains and intercity trains.

Large sections of the French trade union bureaucracy are hostile to the strike. The pro-Socialist Party (PS) French Democratic Labour Confederation (CFDT) cancelled its strike call yesterday, on the pretext that the François Hollande government had made concessions.

In the meantime, ruling circles in France are trying to whip up hysteria and public anger against the strikers. The most virulent comments came from Pierre Gattaz (CEO of Radiall), the leader of the Movement of French Enterprises (Medef), the largest employer federation, who denounced strikers as “terrorists.”

Gattaz said, “Making people respect the rule of law means ensuring that minorities that behave like hoodlums, like terrorists, will not blockade the entire country. ... When the [General Confederation of Labour, CGT] prevents newspapers from appearing because they refused to publish [CGT General Secretary Philippe] Martinez’s tract, it seems to me we are in a Stalinist dictatorship.”

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French workers strike against austerity

By David Hoskins

Washington, D.C. – Ongoing strikes by workers against proposed austerity measures, which would strip workers’ pay and protections, are disrupting France’s economy. Workers have been engaged in strike activity for weeks now as labor unions in the French rail, subway and airport transit, maritime transport, nuclear power, and fuel depot and refinery industries issue calls for work stoppages.

The strikes have reduced production and impacted the broader French economy. According to a May 26 article in the Telegraph, half of France’s petrol stations are completely or partially out of fuel and output has been cut at 16 nuclear power plants.

Bloomberg reports that 15% of flights at Orly airport in Paris have been canceled and delays are expected at Charles de Gaulle airport. A key business federation representing small and medium-sized companies said that 58% of its members are struggling to make deliveries and 47% are having trouble getting supplied.

Many unions are planning to further expand the strike activity starting on June 2. The strikes come after months of mass anti-austerity protests known as Nuit Debout or “arise at night.” The Nuit Debout movement is often compared to Occupy Wall Street and uses the occupation of public squares as a tactic to advance its demands, which include the withdrawal of the austerity labor bill.

According to Jacobin magazine, the Nuit Debout mass waves of protest have stormed France ever since the Socialist Party government of Francois Hollande introduced the proposed ‘reform’ of the French labor code, which amounts to austerity. Some of the protests have been extremely large for a country with a population of just 66 million. Approximately 500,000 people engaged in a national day of action on March 9; more than 1 million joined trade union demonstrations on March 31.

Hollande’s government pushes austerity for workers

The recent attack on French workers comes under the guise of labor ‘reform.’ But what the ruling French Socialist Party calls reform, workers recognize as just more austerity. A review of the main points of the labor austerity bill as identified by BBC News demonstrates that the proposed bill weakens the 35-hour workweek; grants employers greater ability to cut worker pay; reduces layoff protections for workers; and deregulates special leave standards, such as those for maternity leave.

French labor unions are also alarmed at the fact that the austerity measure threatens industry standards by granting individual firms greater power to negotiate directly with their employees on pay and conditions, thus avoiding sector-wide standards set by unions. Unsurprisingly, it is this oft-overlooked part of the austerity bill, known as Article 2, that most reduces union leverage and that the government of Francois Hollande says is non-negotiable.

The anti-labor measures in France represent just one part of the global austerity agenda of the ruling classes during the present period. The 2007-08 global financial crisis and corresponding economic recession caused massive unemployment and home foreclosures for the working class in many countries. Yet government leaders in capitalist countries did not respond with massive jobs programs or social investment. And they certainly did not offer a critique of capitalism itself, even though capitalism is to blame for the widespread suffering of workers around the world.

Instead, capitalist governments offered two different medicines, one for capitalist banks and big business, and the other one for workers. Banking and other preferred industries (such as the automotive industry in the U.S.) receive corporate welfare in the form of massive bailouts. Workers get austerity in the form of cuts to education and other public services, reduced retirement benefits, cuts to food stamps and other welfare programs, restrictions on the rights of organized labor, privatization or outright elimination of government jobs, and regressive tax increases, such as the 2013 increase in the U.S. payroll tax, all to pay for the corporate and bank bailouts.

This agenda of bailouts for capitalists on the one hand and austerity for workers on the other is not new and it has played itself out in country after country. The workers’ movements in countries with strong left parties and labor organizations, such as France and Greece, organize mass resistance to austerity.

In the U.S., organized labor and the broader left struggle to find their footing in leading a mass and prolonged struggle independent of the Democratic Party bosses who are complicit in the austerity agenda. The emergence of vocal and visible economic movements in the U.S. following the Great Recession, such as Occupy Wall Street and the Fight for $15, show that the popular will exists to fight back if it can just be tapped and led in a coordinated way.

French resistance offers lessons to U.S. labor movement

The strikes and mass protests in France have been spearheaded in large part by that country’s main trade union federation - the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) - and Solidaires Unitaires Démocratiques (SUD). The CGT union has it roots in the French Communist Party (PCF), but disaffiliated with the PCF in the 1990s. SUD is a radical union federation that emphasizes social justice unionism and has close ties to the New Anticapitalist Party.

While the CGT has been accused of moderating its program since severing ties with the PCF, it still carries out militant actions, especially by U.S. standards, and has a vocal, militant rank and file that is often successful in pushing the union’s leadership to the left on key issues. It is important to note that what makes unions like CGT and SUD strong, and often successful, in leading anti-austerity battles is militancy in shutting down production and mobilizing in the streets, not size.

France has lower union density than the U.S. As the Economist points out in a March 2014 article, less than 8% of French workers belong to a trade union, down from a high of about 30% in the 1950s. That figure is below the unionization rate of Britain (26%), Germany (18%), and the U.S. (11%). What sets French unions apart is their militancy, not their density.

This militancy stands in stark contrast to the orientation of most U.S. trade union leaders, where some combination of Democratic Party politicking, social justice unionism, and new organizing for union industry density substitute for a sustained strike strategy. Some of the more active labor unions in the U.S. fetishize new organizing as the savior of the U.S. labor movement.

These labor unions rightly point out that as U.S. union density has declined since its peak rate of over 33% in 1945, the share of income going to the top 10% has skyrocketed. However, they fail to account for one other important feature of the trade union movement that has declined in this country over this same period of time - the strike.

There is nothing wrong with social justice unionism and new organizing to build density. These are progressive moves, but they do not have the same strategic value as withholding labor through a sustained strike, which by itself can stop production, curb the ruling class, force concessions and so much more. A militant rank-and-file minority is needed in this country to push labor union leaders to adopt a militant strike orientation, much the same as rank-and-file members in France’s CGT have forced that union’s leadership into the leadership of an anti-austerity fight.

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]

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http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/06/09/fran-j09.html


Strikes against austerity in France and Belgium defy union pressure for sellout

By Alex Lantier
9 June 2016

Strikes are spreading among garbage collection and treatment workers in France against the Socialist Party (PS) government’s regressive labor law, while strikes against austerity continued among rail and public sector workers in France and Belgium despite union pressure for a sellout.

Garbage workers struck and blockaded truck depots and treatment facilities in Paris and the major incinerator in Fos-sur-Mer that treats waste in the Marseille area, which voted formally to strike. Garbage workers also struck in several other cities, including St. Etienne and Lyon.

Paris city hall confirmed in a communiqué that it had “on Wednesday morning called upon the security forces” to attack striking garbage men blockading their work places. There are strike calls or blockades at garbage treatment plants in the Paris suburbs of Ivry-sur-Seine, Issy-les-Moulineaux, and Saint-Ouen.

“Things are going to get complicated,” said Patrice Furé, the chief of staff for the head of Syctom, the Paris area waste management agency.

“The strike movement right now is growing,” he told Reuters. “There are private companies that are beginning to be affected. We are not facing a movement that is running out of steam, far from it.”

The garbage strikes came as rail unions in France and Belgium voted to continue strike action against wage and benefit cuts and the labor reforms of the French and Belgian governments. In Belgium, the francophone General Confederation of the Public Sector (CGSP) prolonged the strike by one week, while its Flemish counterpart ACOD-Spoor indicated that it would seek a compromise with management. A garbage strike is spreading in francophone Belgium, including in the cities of Mons, Tournai, and Liège.

In France, the strike movement is continuing despite close negotiations by the union bureaucracies with state authorities, and intensifying pressure from the PS government to end the strikes before the upcoming Euro 2016 football cup.

Key refineries, including Donges and Gonfreville-l’Orcher in the north and Feyzin in the Rhône valley near Marseille, are still on strike, and the Lavéra facility is still partially blockaded. Work started again at the Grandpuits refinery near Paris, according to CGT sources, after unidentified trade unions called a strike vote and stacked it with workers opposed to the strike, even though a majority of workers at the facility intended to continue striking.

On Tuesday, French rail unions narrowly maintained calls for strike action after extensive talks with railway management and state officials.

“There is a time when, according to a famous quotation, one must know when to end a strike,” declared French President François Hollande, referring to French Stalinist leader Maurice Thorez’s infamous call to end the general strike of 1936 without the taking of power by the working class.

Hollande’s oblique reference to the 1936 general strike and to the treacherous role of the Communist Party amounts to an acknowledgment by the PS that, as it rams through regressive laws in the face of overwhelming popular opposition, the European bourgeoisie is provoking a political confrontation with the working class of revolutionary dimensions. In this, its main strategy is to exploit the absence of revolutionary leadership in the working class.

In France, it is now clear that the only way to force a withdrawal of the law is for the working class to bring down the PS government. The PS has indicated that it intends to stick to the law in the face of all opposition in the working class, relying on the unions and their political allies to isolate the struggles to a few sections of the working class.

The union bureaucracies, while they do not dare end the rail strike for fear of provoking broader anger and an uncontrollable explosion of workers struggles like the 1936 French general strike, are applying the brakes as much as they can to the strike movement. In this, the main role is played by the Stalinist General Confederation of Labor (CGT) union and Solidarity Unity Democracy (SUD) union, which is close to the petty-bourgeois New Anti-capitalist Party.

On Tuesday, government sources explained to Le Monde: “The CGT did not seem to want to oppose reaching a deal on Tuesday morning, but the entire situation depends unfortunately on the national situation with the labor law.”

They made clear, however, that the PS would not budge one iota either on the labor law reform or moves to privatize the French rail sector. “There will be no new negotiations. The agreement negotiated tonight will not go into effect, but there will be unilateral measures by the management of the SNCF [National Railway Society].”

While PS-linked unions are openly demanding the end of the strike, the CGT on Tuesday for the first time did not issue a formal call for continuing the rail strike. However, it did not oppose a call by SUD to continue strike action.

Striking workers who attended general assemblies called by the unions and spoke to the WSWS said that while the unions did not openly call for abandoning the strike, they were starting to discuss ending the strike without the withdrawal of the labor law, downplaying the defeat this would represent.

“They said that the protests had already brought energy and port workers closer together. They said that whatever happens in the protests, we do not have to be embarrassed because we fought well,” one worker told the WSWS.

The author also recommends:

French strike movement exposes bankruptcy of New Anti-capitalist Party
[2 June 2016]

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Dear Friends,

French unions, students, unemployed youth, and undocumented workers are in a powerful battle to defend their right to decent jobs and benefits, in spite of intense state repression on behalf of the austerity agenda. In the U.S., where recent developments include a six-week Verizon workers’ strike, fast food workers invading McDonalds corporate campus with Black Lives Matter banners, farmworker mobilizations, and high school student walkouts to save schools, a win in France could inspire more conscious and united struggle.

We are writing to spread the word about a call for international solidarity in time for the June 14 Paris convergence, which constitutes a general strike. Please read, sign and share the call below (also found at
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To our New York City friends—and all supporters of freedom for U.S. political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal—please check out the two events listed on the flier below, which link the fight against the racist ‘prison-industrial complex’ with the French struggle.


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French ruling class welcomes Euro 2016 visitors with piles of stinking trash

By David Hoskins

Washington, D.C. – Thousands of visiting soccer fans and players were greeted with piles of rotting garbage and severe transportation delays as they arrived in France in time for the first day of the Euro 2016 soccer tournament on June 10. The foul-odored welcome comes courtesy of the French ruling class and the country’s governing Socialist Party.

Ongoing strikes recently intensified and spread to new industries as workers protest an austerity bill that threatens to eliminate labor protections such as the 35-hour workweek, raising it up to as much as 60 hours under certain circumstances, empower employers to more easily fire workers, and undermine union strength in establishing sector-wide industry standards. Sanitation workers recently joined the strikes against the austerity labor bill proposed by the government of Francois Hollande. Air France pilots launched a multi-day strike on June 11.

Slate reports that trash collection has stopped in half of Paris districts and that Air France canceled as many as one-third of flights on the tournament’s second day. Protesting workers blocked access to Rungis, the world’s largest wholesale food market located in the suburbs of Paris, the day before the tournament began. Railway and energy workers continue to engage in strike activities that have shut down fuel deliveries and many oil refineries for weeks and cut train service from the Paris center to Charles de Gaulle airport by two-thirds as Euro 2016 kicks off, according to the Telegraph.

French government, ruling class intransigent as millions arrive for Euro 2016

ESPN FC estimates that 2.5 million fans, including 1.5 million sports tourists, are expected in France’s stadiums throughout the course of the Euro 2016 soccer tournament from June 10 to July 10. The soccer tournament, better known as a football tournament in many countries outside of the U.S., is a major international sporting event.

The Euro 2016 tournament was supposed to be a moment for the French government to shine as host of one of the world’s most popular sporting events. But the ruling politicians and capitalists in France refuse to withdraw the austerity labor bill despite its widespread rejection by that country’s working class. As a result, union-led strike activity continues to disrupt basic services as the intransigence of the French ruling class threatens to spoil the major soccer tournament for fans and players alike.

France’s government has tried to pass the buck and shift the blame to workers. France’s minister of environment, Ségolène Royal, was recently quoted in the Guardian saying, “People want things to return to normal, for the mess to end…France’s pride is at stake. Let’s not harm France’s capacity to organize global events.” The sports minister, Patrick Kanner, went further and accused the unions of guerilla tactics before saying, “They’re spoiling the party. In spoiling the party, they’re spoiling the image of France.”

It is a tactic of capitalist governments around the world to refuse to negotiate in the face of strike activity and hope that the workers will be blamed for the lack of services that can sometimes inconvenience everyday life during a strike. Workers in France reject that blame and point out that it is the ruling class that compels workers to walk off their jobs through its attacks on labor rights and living standards and it is the ruling class that puts a successful Euro 2016 at risk.

As a General Confederation of Labor (CGT) leader in Paris recently stated for BBC News with regard to the timing of the strike as France hosts a major international soccer tournament, “It’s not us who determine the calendar. We did not decide that the Euro will take place on this date. There is a social movement going on now, the re-organization [of labor] continues, the labor law continues. We want the negotiations on the collective agreements [to] be open for everybody. So yes, clearly this will disturb the Euro [tournament] and we will continue the strike.”

Solidarity enhances the French strike’s militancy and success

The militant strikes in France expose the fact that it is the working class that makes the economy operate, not the capitalists or the state. The sustained withholding of labor lays bare the myth that it is great industrialists, enabled by free-market governments, which produce all of the goods and services of modern capitalist economies.

Solidarity has been a key to maintaining the militancy of the French working class during the present period of strikes disrupting that country’s economy. The Telegraph reports that the government has made a number of generous offers to important sectors on strike, such as rail workers. However, the government’s refusal to entertain the withdrawal of the austerity labor bill has thus far caused the workers and their unions in each of these sectors to reject individualized industry settlements, even generous ones, disconnected from the defeat of austerity.

This class conscious rejection of the government’s attempt to divide and conquer creates an atmosphere of solidarity where strike activity is not isolated. By stopping production in a number of key industries—including air and rail transit, the energy sector and sanitation services—the strikes are able to leverage their impact on the economy. Working class solidarity and labor militancy have kept the strikes in France alive for weeks on end, even going into the Euro 2016 tournament.

In doing so, the strikes demonstrate the important role of the working class in any progressive struggle and keep alive the possibility of defeating the proposed austerity labor bill that threatens French workers. Until then, the French ruling class seems intent on welcoming visitors to that country with piles of rotting garbage and other severe service interruptions.

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]

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Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 1267
June 13, 2016
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The French Stand Up
Richard Greeman

“We've had enough” is the phrase on everyone's lips as – against all expectations – the wave of strikes, blockades, disruptions and mass demonstrations begun on May 17th continues to develop throughout France. Indeed, in the past couple of days, two new strategic groups of workers have joined the protest. Technicians at France's nuclear power plants are now cutting back on production of electricity, and the railroad workers have massively joined the street protests while cutting back on trains. Meanwhile, there are long lines at the gas pumps as petroleum workers continue to blockade France's major oil refineries.
French Workers on Strike

Surprisingly, most French people take these inconveniences in good humor, and the polls show broad public support for the movement's goals and even its disruptive tactics. This popular sympathy is all the more surprising given weeks of blanket negative media coverage, hysterical official statements and police tactics designed to discredit the movement. First the issue was the violence of the “casseurs” (wreckers) on the fringes of the big, peaceful, well-organized mass demonstrations, and the image of one flaming police-car in Paris kept popping up on every channel for days.[1] Then came the threat of the unions (government-subsidized and generally cooperative) taking over the country and destroying the economy. Next, the talking heads topic of the day the police, what a great job they do and how we should support them!

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/b1267.jpg

Despite this propaganda campaign, the popular movement continued to grow and public sympathy with it, to the point that the governing Socialist Party split – making it impossible for the François Hollande administration to push its unpopular Labour Reform Bill through the parliament. The government, which had earlier made a few compromises, became afraid to give in to the majority and loose face, so it evoked paragraph 49-3 of de Gaulle's tailor-made Constitution giving the President the power in emergencies to impose laws by edict, without a parliamentary majority. This high-handedness was the last straw for the democratic French, who had come to detest the anti-labour “reform” bill and the already-unpopular neoliberal “Socialist” government that was shoving it down their throats. That's when all Hell broke loose.
Brussels-Imposed Legislation

Don't ask me to explain the bill, except that it is part of a Brussels-imposed, Europe-wide economic liberalization plan and that it makes it easier for managers to fire workers, close plants, flexibilize work schedules, and cut back on overtime pay and severance pay. Most French people don't understand the technicalities either, but with shrewd class awareness, they understand that the “reforms” are an attack by the 1% on the protections and regulations they have fought for over generations. They instinctively see them as another attempt to dismantle the Social Republic, officially so named in the Constitution of 1945, written at the time of the Liberation when the collaborationist French industrialists and their political tools were in disgrace while the slogan “from the Resistance to the Revolution” was still hanging in the air.

Today's struggle is, of course, a defensive battle, and so far there have been only a few barricades (blockading the oil refineries) – barely recalling the revolutions 1789, 1830, 1848, 1871 and the general strikes of 1936 and 1968. But apparently the rebellious instincts and radical temperament of the French working people have not changed all that much. Indeed, in 1995, there was also a weeklong runaway national strike among the workers in the public sector, sparked by an earlier government attempt at liberal “reform,” but according the accepted wisdom in media and governmental circles, the French people had by 2016 supposedly evolved, become “normal,” and now accepted liberalization as necessary and inevitable like every other nation. Guess not.

I am happy (if somewhat ashamed) to report that I was overly pessimistic and somewhat hysterical in my last reports from France,[2] evoking the specter of a coup d’état and possible ‘civil war’ in reaction to Hollande's imposition of the State of Emergency and indiscriminate police raids after the terrorist attacks. So far, the Hollande government has refrained from evoking the State Emergency in today's bras de fer (arm-wrestling contest) between a weak government trying to look tough on one side and on the other the combined forces of a young generation that sees itself being sacrificed on the alter of neoliberalism, an organized labour movement responding to militant pressure from below take a stand, and an independent-minded public that has ‘had enough’ of being manipulated.

Whatever the outcome of May Madness, one thing is clear. There is a new radical awareness on the rise in France and with it a new revolutionary generation that correctly sees that it has no future to look forward to under capitalism. Student agitation, especially in the high schools has been boiling up across the country for months as have the nightly popular assemblies in the squares of Paris and a half-dozen other cities, known as Nuits debout (Stay up all night). These assemblies correspond to a rejection of the pseudo-democracy of the professional politicians and a desire for real participatory democracy and human community. They also function as hothouses for radical ideas, like “Occupy” and the Indignados of 2011.

This intellectual revolution has only just begun, and it is likely to have a long-term effect on consciousness, just as “Occupy Wall Street” (minuscule in comparison) seems to have had on U.S. consciousness. Meanwhile, the French are not only debout (standing up) talking all night, they are also standing up for themselves and for all of us in the streets and on the picket lines – standing up against the 1%'s relentless attacks on our living standards, on our rights, and on our lives. Maybe there is an alternative.

So allow me to conclude this report by translating a few excerpts from interviews recorded[3] during the big demonstration here in Montpellier (May 26) and then close with a translation of the 2016 Platform of one of the Commissions of the Paris Nuit debout at the Place de la Bastille.
Interviews - in Montpellier

Anaïs, age 22, works in a school:

“This is the first time I've come out to a demonstration. Unfortunately I only have a little time for this… I'm not an activist, I consider myself apolitical, even if I participate in Nuit debout when my schedule allows it. I don't think demonstrations are enough to get us anything concrete; marching from point A to point B doesn't bother anyone. If we want to be heard, we must totally block the country's economy. And to succeed, we must get coordinated, even just for one day. I am totally conscious of the annoyances and privations that we might suffer as individuals, but now everybody has the duty to put aside their little personal comforts and to fight for the community.”

Nicolas, age 39, looking for work:

“My unemployed situation has an advantage: it leaves time to go into the street to defend our rights. I'm neither an activist nor a union member, I come as a citizen and I have only missed two demonstrations since March 9th. I am mobilized both on the street and on social media. The manipulations around pseudo-concessions on the proposed law and then the forced passage via the 49-3 edict have strengthened my motivation. Blocking, that's our 49-3, Citizens. Perhaps we will pay the price, but striking the economy, that's the only thing they understand. And if my help is needed in the blocking, I'll go. The polls show that three quarters of the population is against this law, isn't that enough?”

“Elf,” age 16, resident high school student at the lycée Agropolis:

“I only got political three months ago, since the first blockades, which be the way I help set up. Since then it's gone very quickly: I've been to every demonstration. It was thanks to the high school that I became conscious of the importance of demanding our rights. Today, I have an impression the movement is losing speed, but if we don't stand up it's certain we won't get anything! We must continue on to the end. But marches won't be enough, we need to continue and reinforce the blockades, even if we have to suffer for a while: the economy is the only thing that interests them, so better to strike where it hurts!”

Andrée, age 65, osteopath:

“I've been going out in the streets for two months and at the same time actively participating in the Nuit debout. The two are linked; it touches me to see these young people who refuse to be a new consumer-generation, who would rather come together, think and discuss the future. I am reliving my 18th year and May 68. Its important to be out here; it shows that we are present and that our disagreement with the government is visceral. But that isn't enough, as our leaders are deaf. They want to make us believe we are a minority, but I see the workers from my office marching. And whatever the profession, the salary, the same malaise and the same unease are found everywhere! I'm sorry I have to say this, but obviously under these conditions I can only approve of the blockade, it's the only way we can change the power relationship and be heard. I'm even ready to go in myself and to tighten my belt for that.
Nuit debout, Paris:
New Amendments to Plateforme 2016[4]

Hiring the 6 million unemployed by adding one new job for each existing job.
A 25-hour week and an adjustable work schedule.
Raise the minimum monthly salary to €1,500 ($1,700); a minimum of €1,200 ($1,350 for retirement, student scholarships and unemployment benefits.
Public transparency of all salaries; male/female equality of salaries, open the books of all business enterprises.
Maximum income ceiling set at 4 times the minimum.
Free health, schooling and transportation.
Requisition of empty housing, abolition of rents and guaranteed right to housing.
Expropriation of the great fortunes, abolition of private property of the means of production and exchange, direct collective self-management of enterprises.
All power to the Assemblies of workers/inhabitants for planning production on the basis of social needs and ecological imperatives.
Election of delegates with limited mandates and the permanent right of revocation of Assemblies.
Free Federation of industrial unions and residential communities.
Regularization of undocumented people and international cooperation of workers’ powers against underdevelopment, imperialism and war.

UPDATE: June 11, 2016

Not much change in situation here in France. A long drawn out ‘arm-wrestling’ struggle. Typical of the bureaucratic unions, especially the most ‘militant’, the historically communist Confédération générale du travail (CGT), who's goal is not to win a victory for the working people but to re-affirm their power as the ‘legitimate’ intermediary between the workers and the government. So instead of uniting the different branches in a single, open-ended general strike, they space out partial confrontations to demonstrate their control and force the government to include them. The students are into finals right now, so there is not that much activity on the youth front, but Nuit debout continues. And the pressure from below continues. The demonstrations are less controlled by the unions and at the end some people may hold a General Assembly or march off in a spontaneous demonstration. Meanwhile, thanks to videos and cellphones, the the evidence of blatant police brutality and especially of police provocation (undercover cops trashing shops, etc) is really public knowledge. And everyone knows they are acting under orders from the Socialist government.

Alas, this is a repeat of the way the unions sabotaged the previous movements against ‘reforms’ (including the 2011 demonstrations agains cutting retirement and raising the age of eligibility, against giving young workers a lower status, etc). Instead of striking and demonstrating all together keeping up the pressure, the leaders claimed that ‘time is on our side’, space out the demonstrations over months and then suddenly it's June and everyone in France goes on vacation and the ‘reforms’ are passed in an empty Paris. •

Richard Greeman has been active since 1957 in civil rights, anti-war, anti-nuke, environmental and labour struggles in the U.S., Latin America, France (where he has been a longtime resident) and Russia (where he helped found the Praxis Research and Education Center in 1997).

Endnotes:

1. The police have been reported filtering these black-cowled angry young men through their lines, where they have clashed with GTU union monitors; and somehow they never get arrested. Some have been revealed as actual undercover cops.

2. “France at ‘War’,” by Richard Greeman.

3. “A Montpellier: «Les blocages, c’est notre 49-3 à nous»,” by Timothée Aldebert.

4. “Plateforme 2016.”
Related Reading


Strong Headwinds Are Making France a Stormy Sea
Léon Crémieux | 2016-06-02

France: Changes in the Political Landscape
François Sabado | 2015-06-21

France: The Rise of the Left Front
Murray Smith | 2012-08-22

What Will Change in France?
Francois Laforge | 2012-07-19



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[ckaihatsu]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/06/15/fran-j15.html


Opposition mounts to French labor law in new national day of action

By Anthony Torres
15 June 2016

Yesterday’s day of action against the Socialist Party (PS) government’s labor law, the first national protest held since last month, revealed a growing determination among workers to fight the austerity policies imposed by the ruling class across the European Union (EU).

Despite the government’s efforts to smash strikes and demoralize workers, marches in several cities were noticeably larger than in previous mobilizations. About 50 protests were scheduled throughout France.

Workers traveled to the protest in Paris from across the country in trains and convoys of buses chartered for the occasion. While police estimated that 75,000 people participated, trade union sources claimed that more than 1 million took part.

According to press reports, between 6,000-20,000 people marched in Toulouse and 4,000 in Rennes. In France’s second city, Lyon, between 3,800 and 10,000 people gathered.

Workers defied repression organized by the PS and the security forces in the context of the French state of emergency. The media and politicians have insisted insisted that workers halt their struggle to avoid disrupting the Euro 2016 football cup. The Paris prefecture issued restraining orders banning 130 people from participating in the protests.

Riot police attacked the Paris protest, breaking the marchers in two in order to isolate and face off against a few hundred demonstrators. Clashes broke out between the protests and riot police, and security forces fired tear gas and water cannon. In Paris, at least six protesters as well as some 20 policemen were wounded, and there were 15 arrests.

Even more than the swelling of the protest marches, the strength and the sweep of the demands being advanced by workers testifies to the broad radicalization of the movement in the working class against the PS government.

The demands raised in the protests against the labor law go well beyond the retraction of this one reactionary measure. Workers are increasingly hostile to all the PS’ policies: austerity, the state of emergency and imperialist interventions overseas.

The gulf is growing between workers’ opposition and the perspective of the Stalinist General Confederation of Labor (CGT), which is seeking to contain the demonstrations. CGT General Secretary Philippe Martinez is trying to negotiate a deal with the PS on the law that would supposedly meet workers’ demands. As the PS leadership insists that they will tolerate no significant modification to the labor law, workers are insisting that they will accept nothing less than its retraction.

WSWS reporters spoke to protesters in Paris and Marseille. In Paris, Solène, a worker in the psychiatric hospital of Ville-Evrard, said: “I came to protest the labor law, against all these ministers who listen to no one but themselves, who do not listen to the opinions of the people. We’ve had enough and it’s getting impossible.

“Already we are doing so much overtime, we don’t get enough rest, they want to even increase the amount of overtime they give us. We don’t intend to work until we drop. Life is not just work, there is family life after all. We’ve had enough. Today I went onto the streets to say no to [Labor Minister Myriam] El Khomri’s law, she must withdraw this rotten law, period.”

Solène also opposed the government’s attack on democratic rights and particularly the state of emergency. “The state of emergency, what a convenient excuse that is. They would really like us to quit protesting, but we will continue to protest, whatever it takes, and whatever comes of it.” She denounced the PS’ decision to force the labor law through the National Assembly without a formal vote, using emergency powers in Article 49-3 of the constitution.

Referring to the French Revolution, she added, “We are back to 1789, they think they can act like kings. They want to ignore the workers, they just railroad everything through. … They don’t know what to do anymore, they don’t know how to do anything right, in any case they are incompetent and irresponsible people, and they use the 49-3 to say to all of us, shut your mouths.”

WSWS reporters also met Badjindé, a local CGT official born in Mali. He said, “Today we are here for a cause, a cause that is real and serious. We are here because of the the labor law that the Socialist government wants to impose on us. It is very serious for us, our children, and our grandchildren.”

He also criticized the military intervention in Mali launched by France, the former colonial power, and its NATO allies in 2013: “This war, it is a political affair. It is the Westerners and other countries that set up this war against us, against our country. ... We will struggle also, and with God's help, the war will end.”

According to the CGT, 150,000 people protested in Marseille, although police sources claimed the figure was only 5,000. Protest marches by workers from the ports, the oil sector, gas firm Air Liquide and the public service all joined the demonstration.

Julien, an educator specialized in children’s services, told the WSWS that he is demanding “the withdrawal of the El Khomri law. The government will not listen to the people, who reject the destruction of job security. We demand that the government take into account what we are doing and the turn of events. We are going into a dead end, we will give up nothing, and they will have to listen to the fact that 70 percent of the French people oppose the law.”

He stressed that the mobilization was not a symbolic protest. “Today is a big test, I think there are more of us here than the last time, that shows the real relationship of forces. This is not a protest that is one noble last stand before we give up.” Julien added that he expected the struggle to become tougher, a situation he did not welcome but that he thought was inevitable.

On the ending of the refinery strike in Normandy, he said: “After 25 days of striking, of course our comrades need to eat and they have to stop striking. There was a big mobilization today, the refineries will not be operating fully. The struggle on fuel is not lost, at the Fuel Depots of France there are three strategic strike days, and not a single fuel truck is leaving.”

Many people without formal party or union affiliations participated in the Marseille protest. Julia, a preschool assistant, explained that she was protesting everything that is happening in France. She criticized the media for claiming the strike was winding down: “The protesters are still here, not everyone can be on strike all the time because you need money to feed the kids, but we are here. It is not the problem of the workers, they have no choice but to resume work.”

She added, “We are here to say that we will not give up despite the Euro cup. It’s not because someone is trying to frighten us that we will give up protesting in the streets.”

When WSWS reporters raised the necessity for French workers to unify their struggles with European workers in a fight against austerity across the continent, she replied: “That is what we need. Their pillaging operation is international.”

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[ckaihatsu]

http://www.marxist.com/french-labour-law-strengths-and-weaknesses-of-the-movement.htm


French Labour Law: Strengths and Weaknesses of the Movement

Written by Jérôme Métellus in Paris Friday, 10 June 2016
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The renewable strike movement, which has been launched in several key sectors of the economy over the past three weeks, has had the immediate effect of intensifying the media propaganda campaign aimed at the anti-labour law mobilization since the beginning of March

http://www.marxist.com/images/stories/france/thumbnails/thumb_cgt-march.jpg

The extreme aggressiveness of this propaganda, which is orchestrated at the highest levels of the state and the bosses, reflects the hatred and fear experienced by the latter in the face of such mobilizations by refinery and port workers. And for good reason: by paralyzing important sectors of the economy, the renewable strikes showed the way to a possible victory against the labour law. As we noted at the beginning of March, only the development of a renewable strike encompassing a growing number of economic sectors is likely to make the government back down.

At the same time, the renewable strikes [the continuation of which is put to the vote on a daily or weekly basis] have shown the enormous power of the working class. Not a wheel turns and not a light bulb shines without the kind permission of the workers. This truth is unbearable for the capitalists because it has revolutionary implications. Indeed, if it is the workers that make possible all the critical activities of the country’s economy, why shouldn’t they be its masters? Why leave the economy and the state in the hands of a handful of giant parasites - the bosses of the CAC 40 companies and their right-wing, or “left-wing,” politicians?

Our opponents have posed that question themselves, in a way, when they continuously repeated the words of Prime Minister Manuel Valls: “The CGT [trade union confederation] does not make the law in this country.” This is true; it’s Medef (the main employers’ association) who makes the law in this country at the moment. But the present movement emphasizes the enormous potential power of the labour movement. The workers of the EDF electric company reminded Medef President Pierre Gattaz of this by cutting power to his holiday home, while switching more than one million homes to cheaper “off-peak” rates. Therefore, if it really was the labour movement that “made the law” instead of big business, wouldn’t things go better for the mass of the population? These are the kinds of questions that the statement of Manuel Valls has aroused in the minds of a number of workers. In seeking to turn “public opinion” against the CGT and workers in struggle, the Prime Minister has given material for political discussions on this crucial question: who should run society? Who should “make the law”: a minority of profit-hungry big capitalists, who are destroying the economy - or the mass of workers, who produce all the wealth?

Encouraged by government statements and Pierre Gattaz, journalists and columnists of the major capitalist media have thrown aside their last trappings of “objectivity” and joined the great reactionary chorus. The problem in France, you see, is the CGT, the “blockades”, the population being “taken hostage” by “a minority of radicalized strikers” - and so on, around the clock, in all major media. Le Point director Franz-Olivier Giesbert has managed the difficult task of outpacing even infamous columnist Eric Zemmour in his inflammatory rhetoric, by putting the CGT and the Islamic State group in the same pot. But then, you must treat the CGT like IS! In one sentence, Giesbert revealed the real purpose of the “state of emergency” and anti-democratic measures adopted in the wake of attacks in January and November 2015. All these measures are aimed not at terrorists of IS but our democratic rights, the democratic rights of the labour movement - including the “terrorists” and “thugs” of the CGT, to quote the president of Medef. This is another important political lesson that has escaped from the pen of a bourgeois reporter.

By pushing our opponents into making such political pronouncements against the strikers and their organizations, renewable strikes have had the effect of politicizing the debate. Let’s take another example. The CGT is accused, on every television channel and radio frequency, of making “a mockery of democracy.” How? By rejecting the authority of Parliament and the President of the Republic “elected by the people” in 2012. The “democratic institutions” are threatened by a “minority” of “radicalized” unionists. But again, the argument turns against its authors. First of all, the use of the decree powers of article 49-3 on May 10 in order to bypass Parliament showed the attitude of the government itself towards the democratic institutions. And, as the mobilized workers now say, “the strike is our 49-3.”

Second, President François Hollande did not campaign in 2012 on a commitment to destroy the Labour Code. Rather he named “finance” as his “enemy” and promised to improve the lot of workers, youth, the unemployed and pensioners. But once in power, his policy was driven by the interests of “finance” and big business in general, at the expense of the rest of the population. And they want the workers - a majority of whom voted for Hollande in 2012 – to peacefully let themselves be stripped of their rights after being betrayed, once again, by the leadership of the Socialist Party?

No, Holland and Valls do not represent “the majority of the people”; they represent and serve a handful of billionaires, while they languish in the depths of unpopularity. In contrast, the activists of the CGT in struggle defend the interests of the entire working population. The real democratic “majority” is on the side of the strikers and their unions, not on the side of the Élysée Palace, the Parliament and the MEDEF. This is how a great many workers understand the situation. The bourgeois (and corrupt) “democratic institutions” come out more discredited than they were already.

A problem of leadership

In the first instance, the media offensive against strikes and the CGT has not affected the massive support enjoyed by the movement. This is not only what the polls show, but also the great success of the strike fund launched by info'com-CGT [the union’s ICT workers’ branch]: over 260,000 euros collected to date. If the national leadership of the CGT had organized a serious financial campaign of solidarity with the strikers, the figure would undoubtedly be much higher.

Support for the movement is therefore strong. But that can change. If blockages and renewable strikes do not develop significantly, if they do not rapidly spread to new sectors of the economy, it is unlikely that the government will back down. So, for lack of a perspective for victory, the movement could lose public support. This is the objective of Valls and Holland. The main danger is not anti-union propaganda of the government, but the relative isolation of the mobilized sectors.

Above all, workers engaged in a renewable strike cannot hold out indefinitely. By its very nature, the extension of the movement must be fast. From this point of view, we must recognize that the situation is mixed. The garbage and waste treatment workers have entered the movement. The strike is still solid in strongholds such as the Compagnie Industrielle Maritime oil terminal at Le Havre harbour. Every day, blocking actions and roadblocks, among other things, are organized around the country, including notably the initiative of electricity and gas workers. On 7 June, a CGT statement announced strikes in 3 of the 4 Amazon sites in France - where working conditions are notoriously bad - and "renewable actions in many food companies (Nestlé 56, Haribo Perrier 30, Jacquet 63, Tabac Le Havre...), engineering factories (LME 59 Iveco 07 Annonay, Peugeot Mulhouse...), commerce (Intermarché, Leclerc 31), and glass (Verralia...)". All these strikes are very significant. They show enormous potential. But at the same time, the movement is receding in the refineries, while they were all on strike on 24 May. The owners of several refineries are engaged in intense manoeuvring to break the strike, holding "consultations" over the heads of the workers’ assemblies. Most road transport workers have returned to work. The strike on the SNCF railways is not solid enough to paralyze traffic. No significant disturbance is visible on the RATP (Paris transport) network.

The dynamic is therefore contradictory. And once again, the government will not back down easily: firstly, because the Labour Code is a very important counter-reform from the standpoint of big business; secondly, because the government fears that a victory for the workers will encourage new mobilizations. This is what the CGT leadership should explain, instead of simply welcoming the mobilization - ignoring its weaknesses - and sowing illusions about the potential impact of the ‘day of action’ on June 14 (which was set for far too long after the beginning of the renewable strikes). In itself, the day of action on June 14 - even if it is powerful - will not force Hollande and Valls to back down. Remember that in the autumn of 2010, Sarkozy and Fillon conceded nothing in the face of three days of action, each bringing more than 3 million people onto the streets of the country. Unless it forms part of a phase of expansion of the renewable strikes, the day of action on June 14 will change nothing.

There are limits to “striking by proxy” against the labour law, [in which some key sections of workers bear the brunt of the action while others offer more passive support]. In the absence of a generalized movement, the workers on strike will attempt to wrest guarantees from their own employers before returning to work. The government is manoeuvring to encourage this scenario, as we have seen with the road transport workers who obtained guarantees and as we are currently witnessing with the railway and airport workers among others. It would be absurd to blame the workers of these sectors. The responsibility for this situation falls on the national leadership of the unions involved in this movement who do not sufficiently take into account the real dynamic of the struggle and call yet again “to continue and amplify the mobilization in all of its forms,” when the only “form” of mobilization that can lead to victory at the current moment is the rapid spreading of renewable strike action to the maximum number of sectors of the economy.

Lastly, the CGT continues to call for mobilizations “in order to obtain the withdrawal of the labour law... and to win new rights with a labour code for the 21st century.” The withdrawal of the labour law is obviously the main demand and should remain so. We must push back against the attacks of the government. But many workers – most notably public service workers – do not feel immediately threatened by this law, which on paper does not directly affect them (although in reality any step back in the private sector is a step back in the public sector). Conversely, in the private sector, a great number of employees are already faced with provisions contained in the labour law. This is why positive and offensive demands should be incorporated into the platform of the movement – for example on wages or working time – capable of bringing new layers of workers into action. In this respect, “new rights with a labour code for the 21st century” is a formulation that is far too vague without any real concrete content. This cannot convince anyone to enter the struggle.

After years of counter reforms and austerity, employees are willing to fight: this is clearly shown by the current movement. But against opponents as determined as Valls, Hollande and Gattaz, the movement needs a leadership that is determined to fight until the end, with an offensive strategy that corresponds to the real balance of power and the actual dynamic of the struggle. If the leadership is lacking at the top of the trade unions, workers and trade unionists who are active on the ground should take things into their own hands. The general assemblies of the workers must be linked at the local, regional and national levels through elected and recallable delegates in order to give the movement a democratic structure able to fully express the militancy of the workers, develop the movement and go on the offensive. The demonstration of June 14th in Paris could be the opportune moment to organize a meeting of delegates from general assemblies of active areas all over the country. There is no time to lose!

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[ckaihatsu]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/06/23/fran-j23.html


French government backs down from ban on protest against labor law

By Alex Lantier
23 June 2016

Protests are to be held in cities across France today against the Socialist Party (PS) government's despised labor law, after the PS suddenly backed down from threats to ban today's protest in Paris. The unprecedented decision to threaten such a ban points to the advanced state of preparations for state repression of social opposition in the working class.

After Prime Minister Manuel Valls and President François Hollande last week repeatedly threatened to ban further protests, the Paris police prefecture issued a brief statement yesterday morning declaring that the protest in Paris would be banned for security reasons.

Talks with the trade unions had failed, it stated, “as union representatives refused categorically to hold a static assembly and instead formulated alternative proposals of paths for protest marches.”

The statement continued: “After a careful examination, these alternative proposals did not allow for the necessary protection of persons and property, nor the necessary maximum mobilization of the security forces against the terror threat that is currently at a high level and imposes exceptional demands on the national soil. Under these conditions, the prefect of police sees no option besides banning the protests.”

The significance of the prefecture's position was clear. As the government has given no indication that it believes the terror threat from Islamist networks trained as part of NATO's imperialist wars in Libya and Syria would die down, the prefecture was effectively arguing that social protests in Paris would be banned for an entire period. Fundamental, constitutionally protected democratic rights to strike and protest were to be voided with a few strokes of a pen in the Paris prefecture.

The position manifestly had the support of the entire top leadership of the PS government. At a press conference, its spokesman, Stéphane Le Foll, criticized journalists who were asking about Valls' role in pushing for the banning of the protest.

“The little game where you let people think that a decision was taken inside the executive by the prime minister falsifies the issue,” Le Foll said. “Decisions are taken in a collective manner, and the police prefecture tries to balance between the right to protest and the risks that are involved.”

Nonetheless, while Le Foll was speaking, the leaders of the Stalinist General Confederation of Labor (CGT) and the Workers Force (FO) unions were demanding an emergency meeting with Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. At this meeting, they reportedly warned Cazeneuve that, even if the protest were banned, it would be impossible to prevent masses of people from showing up to protest and assembling in a large number of smaller illegal protest gatherings. Attacking and dispersing such rallies would require even more policemen than policing one large protest.

As CGT and FO officials spoke to Cazeneuve, online petitions were circulating in which people declared that they would defy any ban and participate in tomorrow's protest. One petition posted on change.org gathered nearly 150,000 signatures over the course of the day.

At 12:45 PM, after the meeting with Cazeneuve, CGT General Secretary Philippe Martinez and FO leader Jean-Claude Mailly held an unusual joint press conference together with other union officials. Directly contradicting the police prefecture and Le Foll, they announced that Cazeneuve had authorized a protest, mapped out along a short, circular route, starting and finishing at Bastille Square, along which protesters would be authorized to march.

Though the purpose of this decision was clearly to box the protesters in and set up the “static assembly” that the prefecture had originally wanted, Martinez and Mailly hailed this decision as “a victory for the unions and for democracy.”

Cazeneuve gave a press conference an hour later to confirm that the circular march would not be banned. At the same time, he threatened the demonstrators, declaring, “Nothing should get out of control, no violence will be tolerated.”

Press commentators soon began speculating as to whether this humiliating climb-down meant a loss of face for Valls, after his calls for banning protests were disavowed by Hollande and Cazeneuve. In fact, the Socialist Party’s decision to ban the protest and its subsequent abrupt reversal have exposed the party’s escalating desperation in the face of mass working-class opposition, and its determination to trample on basic democratic rights if this will enable it to impose its program of social attacks.

It once again made clear that the state of emergency imposed by the PS after the November 13 terror attacks in Paris is directed not against terrorists, but against the working class and its democratic rights. While the PS is maneuvering to impose an ever more nakedly antidemocratic regime, the social force that is emerging as the main defender of and social constituency for democratic rights is the working class.

It also exposes pseudo-left parties such as the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) and the Left Front (FdG) of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who called for a Hollande vote in the 2012 elections and claimed that protests could be organized to pressure the PS to adopt left-wing policies. In fact, the NPA and FdG mounted no significant protest action until mass discontent erupted among youth and workers this year against the PS labor law. And the PS has responded to protests not by shifting to the left, but by carrying out ever more brutal repression.

While the PS banned protests by youth groups and Muslim and Palestinian organizations against the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2014, its current threat to ban a trade union protest on social issues is unprecedented.

If the ban had been maintained, it would have been the first time a union protest was banned since Paris prefect and former Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon banned an anti-Algerian war protest called by the Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF) and the CGT on February 8, 1962. On that day, Paris police attacked protesters who defied the ban, leading to the death of nine protesters at the Charonne metro station. Hundreds of thousands of people turned out to attend their funeral in one of the major demonstrations of mass opposition to the Algerian war.

Given this history, it is clear that yesterday's announcement of a protest ban by the police prefecture, initially backed by the Interior Ministry, is a threat to escalate the already brutal repression of the three-month-old protest movement against the Socialist Party’s regressive labor law.

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