|
|
Chirac facing defeat?
ON THURSDAY 10 March more than one million people took to
the streets of France demanding better wages and battling against a longer
working week. Private-sector workers joined with their colleagues in the public
sector; veterans of many demonstrations joined with young workers and school
students on their first demonstration.
This was the fifth national day of action since the
beginning of 2005 and the most important since the spring of 2003 and the big
battles against the pension ‘reform’ of the right-wing government headed by
prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin. According to the trade unions, the turnout
on the 150 demonstrations across France doubled in comparison with the previous
national day of action on 5 February, a Saturday. This impressive show of
working-class force has put the French establishment and right-wing government
on the back foot.
The Raffarin government, guided by the strategists of the
employers’ federation, Medef, and president of the republic, Jacques Chirac,
thought it had broken the back of workers’ resistance in the spring of 2003.
Then, the failure of the trade unions to organise a general strike allowed for
the pension reform to be implemented. The government continued with the bosses’
offensive, semi-privatising electricity and gas, attacking social services and
education. Post and SNCF, the national railway company, have been reorganised to
prepare the way for privatisation. On 8 February the government smashed the
35-hour week, in reality, authorising the right of bosses to make workers work
longer without paying for all the hours worked over 35.
There is great anger at the attempts of the bosses to
introduce longer working hours. But many workers have not forgotten the real
experience of the introduction of the 35-hour week by the last ‘plural left’
government – a coalition of social democrats, ‘communists’, greens and
independents - when it was used to introduce savage ‘flexibility’ in the private
sector. At the Citroën car factory in Seine-Saint-Denis, for example, production
went up to 6,000 cars in a four-day period from the same amount in a five-day
period.
Attempts by employers to lengthen the working week amount to
a further cut in the real wages of private-sector workers. The 5.2 million
public-sector workers have suffered the same erosion of their wages. According
to the CGT, the second-biggest union federation, earnings in real terms have
fallen 5-6% in the last three years. The government offered public-service
workers a meagre wage increase of 0.5% from 1 February 2005 and another 0.5%
from 1 November.
Raffarin waited three days before responding to the trade
union mobilisation of 10 March. Inviting union leaders to restart negotiations
on public-sector wages, he declared in his own inimitable style: "Today, to have
courage means to reform… Political clarity guides toward the balance between
listening and determination… In the next few days I will show, concretely, that
I know how to put one and then the other into practice". He called on employers
to look at concrete initiatives to start wage negotiations in the private
sector.
Antoine Seillière, head of Medef, declared that neither the
government nor the employers’ federation has the authority to determine wages in
the private sector. He also deplored the government reacting in such a great
hurry to pressure ‘from the street’.
Raffarin and Chirac have decided to change strategy. They
are playing for time and have offered some very limited concessions. They are
worried by the ever increasing numbers of public- and private-sector workers
taking part in demonstrations, and especially by the growing mood against the
European Union (EU) and European constitution. French workers look at the
policies of the EU and the French government and draw the conclusion that these
are evil twins. The neo-liberal drive to privatise, deregulate and undermine the
living and working conditions of millions of workers is equally central to the
policies of the French government as it is to the EU.
The CGT is calling for a no-vote in the referendum on the
European constitution scheduled for 29 May. By doing so it has elevated the
referendum into an issue central to the mobilisation of the working class
against Raffarin, and added enormous pressure on the pro-constitution parties in
the government and opposition. With the next national election about two years
away, the referendum on the European constitution will be the first opportunity
to hammer the present government.
Public support for the European constitution has been
dropping steadily in France. It is now only ten weeks before the vote and
support has dropped to 56%, ten percentage points lower than three months ago.
One opinion poll published in Le Parisien on 18 March put support for the
constitution at 49%, with 51% against (although with 53% of voters undecided).
This is the first time that the ‘no’ camp has lead in the polls, and will have a
lot of French and European leaders choking on their croissants.
The right wing is split over the issue with high profile
figures, such as former interior minister Charles Pasqua, speaking out against:
"This treaty is the founding act of the ‘New Europe’ dear to Donald Rumsfeld,
subordinate to the financial markets, shaped in the Atlantacist mould with which
Turkey’s accession conforms exactly, and integrated de facto in the ‘New World
Order’."
The PS (Parti Socialiste) organised an internal referendum
to decide the position of the party. PS leader, François Hollande, campaigned
for a ‘yes’ and won. His main opponent was former prime minister, Laurent Fabius,
generally regarded as number two in the party. The ‘no’ camp still got 42%. It
does not mean that the internal debate is over. New opinion polls suggest that,
if the vote was re-run today, the ‘no’ camp would win 59%. Fabius and other PS
leaders continue to campaign for a ‘no’ vote, adding weight to their ambition to
lead the PS in the 2007 elections. The internal strife is ferocious and a future
internal regroupment or fracture cannot be excluded. Henri Emmanuelli, leader of
Nouveau Monde, one of the minority groupings inside the PS and against the
constitution, compared PS members who support the European constitution with the
socialists who voted to grant full powers to the collaborationist Vichy regime
of marshal Henri Pétain in 1940.
Referendum fever is reaching such heights that Chirac spoke
out publicly against the Bolkenstein directive on services. He said it was
"unacceptable" and that it "should be picked apart". Allegedly, he also asked
the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barosso, "to keep better
control over his commissioners". Recently, different European commissioners have
upset the French media because of their neo-liberal frankness. Danuta Hübner,
commissioner for regional policies, declared that "rather than putting an end to
delocalisation the EU would have to encourage it inside Europe". Nelli Kroes,
commissioner for competition, added: "EU subventions for the poor regions of the
richer EU states would have to be stopped". Vladimir Spidla, commissioner for
social affairs, put the boot in by stating that the "objective is first and
foremost flexibility". Peter Mandelson, rewarded by Tony Blair with the post of
EU commissioner for trade and commerce, did his bit by reminding member states
that "they need to continue to reform their labour markets and the systems of
social protection".
The situation in France is on a knife edge for the
government and the elite. Raffarin’s strategy is to propose negotiations and try
to break the growing unity between public- and private-sector workers. By
offering something to the trade union bureaucracy he will try to derail the
mobilisations and, at the same time, attempt to safeguard a victory for the yes
camp in the European constitution referendum. The workers and youth of France
have shown tremendous understanding and relentless energy in their battle
against neo-liberalism and capitalism. This defiance has safeguarded France from
the worst excesses of neo-liberalism, a situation described by the new finance
minister, Thierry Breton, as "the collective refusal of a whole generation… to
reform what needs to be reformed and to eliminate waste".
The present movement in France and the possibility of a vote
against the European constitution on 29 May can have a profound influence on
political developments. It could lead to splits amongst the centre-left and
centre-right parties, and to a regroupment of political forces. The working
class is, for the moment, held back because it lacks its own genuinely socialist
political force. Although many occasions to begin constructing such a new
workers’ party have been missed in the past, the present eruptions will create
new opportunities for the working class of France and Europe to advance further
on the road to socialism.
Karl Debbaut
|