"We've really started something"

Submitted by AWL on 27 March, 2018 - 7:47 Author: By Olivier Delbeke
22 March strike

Between 400,000 and 500,000 demonstrators – on top of the 202,000 from pensioners' groups on demonstrations the previous week – came together across France, with around 60,000 in Paris, including the public sector and railway workers, came together on 22 March.

There was a feeling among the strikers and the other participants that this time something is really starting: that Thursday 22 March was a day when the social majority came together, against the arrogant vandalism of a Presidency which is setting out to impoverish pensioners, rob young people of their future, and liquidate the special employment rights of public sector workers and railway workers alike.

It was this political content, pointing in the direction of greater unity among workers, that gave the day of action of 22 March an energy, a draw, and a sense of hope that made it more than an "ordinary" demonstration.

And so the situation is becoming tense. The President, the Prime Minister and their ministers are going at it with anti-strike speeches and threats – all the while conceding a retreat on their planned increase in CSG [social security payment] charges for retired couples whose joint income is greater than the "threshold" of 1830 Euro per month.

We should note an important aspect of this political situation: the "Rassemblement National" (RN), the new name for the Front National (FN) and the nebula of groups which form a bridge from the RN to [mainstream conservative party] Les Républicains (LR) (such as the "Patriotes", the [rightwing Eurosceptic] Union Populaire Républicaine, the [rightwing 'Gaullist'] Debout la France, etc.) are all trying to make a showing in the demonstrations – which, thankfully, they are often chucked off – and to play the "social" card, attacking "immigration" and "immigrationists".

At the same time, physical attacks are taking place, the most serious of which being the one in the Montpellier law school. Students protesting against [new online registration system] Parcoursup were attacked by a group of rightwing hooligans supervised by the Dean, one Pétel, who resigned two days later after the incident (which in spite of the resignation is far from resolved). "Macronism" has in no sense done away with the far right, and indeed behind "Macronism" we find the far right.

It is also not out of place to note that the Islamist far-right also hates the people and the workers. The attack in the Super-U supermarket near Carcassonne [of 23 March] killed four, including one soldier who heroically swapped himself for a hostage. All these deaths, including the latter's, are on our side. The best response is to continue to build unity, build the strike, build the social confrontation.

The night before, the CGT leadership decided to publish a call for a follow-up inter-industry day of action, slated for Thursday 19 April.

That started another debate when another proposal was circulated, this one from [Mélenchon's] "France Insoumise", whose leaders, since January, have proven unable to assert their own agenda over and against the development of the struggle (just as they tried to last September): the argument was that there had to be a big rally on a weekend so that those who "could not strike", including small business owners, could come and raise the slogan "Macron: one year is enough".

Inter-industry action, or more properly a general strike, is what is needed. But the date set for it is a long way off, and for most of France falls in the middle of school holidays, including in Paris, and the gathering mobilisation of the youth is an important factor in the balance of power.

It seems well-chosen as a way of dodging the long-running arguments for and against "joining up the struggles". Before and during the 22 March demonstration, Bernadette Groison, leader of the [largely public-sector trade union federation] FSU, gave an example of the arguments "against", by deploring the fact that the presence of rail workers had rendered the public sector workers "less visible"! On the other hand, a lot of activists seem to enjoy sounding "radical" by counterposing "joining up the struggles" to "sectoral interests". Let's be clear: the best thing for advancing sectoral interests, in particular those of public sector workers, teachers and railways workers, is to go into action together. And that's what the ill-named "joining up the struggles" means: we are already in a common fight, and that's what the demonstrators of 22 March understood. What B Groison is saying in fact runs counter to the sectoral interests of the FSU, and of public sector workers in general. Yes, to win, we need to be strong: so one way or another, we need a unified, joint strike.

The precondition for that is unity at the base: the demands are there. What we need is to unite: and so, necessarily, we need to centralise. That's why we need so badly to centralise all the vigorous departmental movements which are pressing against the minister, against cuts to classes and schools, and for saving small schools, in town and country alike.

Such a united front movement assert itself with the unions. That also means that it should negotiate when there is something worth negotiating over, i.e. the movements' demands; and not when there's nothing worth talking about on the table (i.e. the government's programme). No trade union federation organising in the public sector and in particular not the FSU and the public sector branches of the CGT or CGT-FO should continue "negotiating" with the Secretary of State who is still insisting on local contracts taking precedence over national law!

Between now and 19 April, rail workers will begin a three-day strike which will either develop into a real strike movement, with workplace assemblies voting on whether to continue the action, or not. Should we just wait and see which it will be? Ought we not, rather, jump into action alongside them, in all sectors?
These are the questions that are posed. They are political in the sense that trade union independence demands united and centralised action, and in the sense that they concern everyone.

That's why we will be taking part in the assembly-discussion called by the Front Social on the question of how to "join up the struggles", where we will argue that it makes the most sense to us to call for united strike action on 7 April. It's also why we are organising a debate in May, to which we will be inviting various tendencies in the workers' movement to address the question of how to fight Macron, now.

Stop Press:  We have just learned that the national leadership of the CGT has called for a "day of action" on 3 April, the day that the rail workers' strike is set to start. In this case, we need a clear call for inter-industry strike action on that day, without announcing the other strike days to the government in advance: after all, we are in it to win it, aren't we?

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A reawakening

A report by the NPA

It has been a long time since the various branches of the public sector [in France] have been subject to such a violent attack. The undermining of the "special regime" of employment for public-sector workers is a bold attack against a whole host of historic working-class gains.

Everyone, from SNCF rail workers to public sector staff, is affected by the proposed CAP 2022 action programme; and at the same time state education is undergoing another reform. Cutting public service job numbers will hurt public services just as much as working conditions; and it will contribute to unemployment... At a time when ­ unemployment benefits are under attack.

In the private sector, whole branches of industry can identify with the targets of these attacks. Where the labour law has force, where bosses are bringing in redundancy programmes or closing workplaces: at Ford, where our comrade Philippe Poutou works; in [car manufacturer] PSA; at Carrefour, Pimkie, Pages Jaunes and many other workplaces.

Halfway between the public and private sector, the workers at Ehpad [public-private-partnership retirement homes] and hospitals are mobilising for proper funding, and workers at Air France are organising over pay as part of their annual negotiation process. 
The hope is to join these struggles together. 
 
The government is looking for a confrontation across the board, in order to inflict a defeat on a scale that will allow them to spend a peaceful term in office, and especially so that they can undertake a new pensions reform.

This period is very different from the one in which Thatcher attacked the miners in 1984-1985. This is not about the closure of a sector of industry, but an attempt to drastically reduce a sector's rights and its strength. Whatever the outcome of this fight, the trains will carry on rolling, and the hospitals will continue to be chock-full of patients.

What's at issue in this fight is not the survival of the workers' movement, but the conditions under which it will take part in the class struggles to come. In 1968, the exasperation of an ultra-stratified society turned into a generalised revolt which grew and spread beyond the abilities of the Stalinists and Gaullists to control it. Such a moment will come again, sooner or later: and the outcome of this fight will influence that moment; it will influence the confidence of the workers in their collective power and their political consciousness.

To win this fight and the ones to come, we need a mass strike in which workers meet each other and build up ties of solidarity: a united strike which will undermine sectarianism; a political strike which will create the building blocks of an alternative to capitalism. A victory here would reverse the current course of the class struggle, which up until now has been a succession of more-or-less heavy defeats going back a decade.

The present mobilisation is full of contradictions. Trade unions are talking up the SNCF strike as a long, tough fight... But the inter-trade union strike committee is only preparing a series of disjointed days of action. Workers are expressing their anger... But they are a long way from being able to go beyond their union bureaucracies. The joining-up of the struggles seems possible, thanks to the situation in health, Air France, education... But there is almost no planning or organising for joint mobilisations going on. A call from political organisations in support of the strike was launched at the initiative of the NPA... But we are still a long way from building a united political campaign to build and support these strikes.

At the united meeting to draft this call, our comrades in Lutte Ouvrière walked out after ten minutes on the grounds that "workers have no need of support from political parties to mount a struggle." That is a misunderstanding of how to move forward towards mass movement. We fight for joint days of action uniting different sectors, for strikes that continue beyond a single day under the control of general assemblies in those sectors where there is a possibility of mass action; but the decisive question for building a joint movement is the matter of whether workers conceive of themselves as leading a common struggle to level up employment statuses, for public services, against job cuts, for sharing out working hours and against the government.

In short, the working class constituting itself as a class waging a political fight against the government. Discussions in general assemblies, demonstrations, workplace visits combine with a political battle with parties, unions and so on. That is a process that the NPA is trying, and will continue to try, to take part in. 

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