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Tony Cross reports from Paris on recent developments in French workers move into action HE USUAL BUSTLE of a departure lounge LAr tane workon were tame a steam.
was absent when 1 visited Paris's Roiss Air France workers were staging a sit-down. Facing them were a cordon of CRS police, pistols on their belts and riot shields on their arms. At Orly airport, strikers and CRS fought it out on the runway, the police using teargas and industrial fire extinguishers. At Roissy, freight terminals were blockaded. Both Paris airports and the one at Ibulouse were paralysed for days. The strikers were fighting a management 'recovery' plan for 4,000 job losses and big cuts in unsocial hours payments and holidays. Polls showed the majority of French people supported the strik- The strike terrified the newly elected right-wing government. Prime minister Edouard Balladur, who had been on the government's negotiating team during the general strike of 1968, was reportedly terrified of a repetition of those revolutionary events. The result was complete capitulation. The plan and the Air France managing director were dumped.
The media, the bosses and the government were amazed at the strikers'
militancy.
Recession and mass unemployment were supposed to cool tempers of stroppy workforces. That's the theory anyway.
And it was working so well under the last, 'Socialist' gov- - union ernment membership had fallen to an all-time low.
Before they came to power in April 18 • France especially in the public sector.
the strikers euphemistically called.
г0 GROCE TOU - UNISNS, rOV Workers on the streets of Paris fighting unemployment. France.
last year, the right-wing parties warned that social discontent was likely to explode outside industry, in the form of riots for example. They were right about riots, but they were wrong about industry. The airport strike marked a new wave of militancy, The government, having announced an austerity programme for all French workers, tried to make an example of its own employees. Also, to carry through its massive privatisation programme, it needed to lick state-owned companies into the sort of shape potential buyers will appreciate. Air France is due to be sold off - but it lost $617m last year. Not good for the portfolio, so the management worked on a 'social plan, as they're Air France is not the only company to suffer such a plan. There has been an epidemic of them in both private and public sectors. There had been small disputes in private industry but up until October the labour front was relatively quiet. Then on 6 October railway workers came to GREVEN
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Then, on 12 October, a united call by Mitterrand and prime minister Balladur. Paris in their thousands. They wanted to defend their pension scheme and create new, secure jobs on the railway. They were opposing a wage freeze and the break-up of the state-owned company. The numbers and the enthusiasm surprised the movement's leaders. And so did the movement that followed.
There were protest strikes on the railway, the metro in Paris and some provincial cities, and the post and telephone company. There were also demonstrations by workers from the state-owned computer manufacturers Bull, where half the French workforce is due to be sacked and total closure is threatened.
two union federations, Force Ouvriere (FO) and the CGT, mobilised 30,000 state employees on the streets of Paris and others in provincial cities. The protest was accompanied by well-supported strikes. On the following Friday, the CFDT federation held another well-supported demonstration.
HE RIGHT WON last year's general election, even though their vote didn't go up. They won against a background of political cynicism caused by the experience of a Socialist Party government that had tried to manage the market economy. It presided over recession, mass unemployment and social decay and bitterly disillusioned millions of people.
Socialist voters abstained in their millions. And they are still doing so. A recent by-election in Marseilles had to be re-run because of a rate of abstention of over 80%.
Of course, things have not improved under the right. Statistical institutes continually revise their economic forecasts downwards. All agree that unemployment, as officially measured, will remain above three million.
The Balladur government's response was reflation for the bosses and austerity for the workers. It launched the Balladur loan', by which the government tapped the French people for 40bn Francs for building and civil engineering projects, and tax and social security concessions for businesses. The debt is to be paid by selling off state-owned industries. An Employment Bill passed in the autumn handed 85bn Francs to the employers in exemptions from social security payments. It also proposes shorter working hours - with loss of pay - more part-time working and the 'annualisation' of working time.
Annualisation means you do not work a 35 or 40-hour week but a certain number of hours in the year. Sounds tempting? Women working for the Trois Suisses catalogue company, which already operates the system, reported having to work nearly all their hours in the five most busy months. Sometimes they don't know what hours they will work until the previous day. Inevitably, they work when it suits the bosses, not themselves. It was this employer-government offensive that revitalised the unions. Activists feel free to fight this government in a way they did not the previous 'socialist government, whatever its faults. But the French trade union movement is divided into five major union federations, plus autonomous unions in most industries. At Roissy airport there are 15 different unions and the majority of strikers were not members of any of them.
So there has been tremendous pressure for a united response to the government's plans. CGT general secretary Louis Viannet has taken up this demand and called for united demonstrations and strikes. But the CFDT, whose leadership is currently the most right-wing, has cold-shouldered his advances.
Fortunately, the rank-and-file resisted the bureaucrats'
attempts to scupper their campaigns. Trade unionists in 15 public companies, including CFDT branches, organised a 'first united national action on 18 November'.
Amazingly, FO told its members to pull out and CFDT leaders threatened disciplinary action against activists who helped plan this initiative. But the day of action went ahead and 20,000 demonstrated in Paris, a remarkable turn-out considering the union chiefs' obstruction.
The government continues to duck and weave. They dropped plans to freeze civil servants' and local authority workers' pay and pressurised railway management to modify their social plan. But then, at the end of 1993, they rammed a reform of the education system through to allow councils to subsidise private education - which in France is almost all church-run. Teachers' unions have already taken strike action and a potentially huge national demonstration was planned for 16 January. Faced with this mounting opposition, when the constitutional court ruled against the measure, the government retreated And battles continue in industry too. Print bosses seem to be headio i a lurdoch-style contruna-
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=r. on the national newspapers. Big companies like ine Michelin tyre manufacturers are proposing wage freezes for 1994. And in November 13,000 miners in Lorraine went on strike to defend what's left of their industry.
They hit the television screens when they fought pitched battles with the police in the city of Metz. On 17 December some miners held a junior minister hostage at pit bottom to force labour minister Gerard Longuet to meet their representatives. Members of Militant Labour's sister organisation in France, Gauche Revolutionnaire/Jeunesses Communistes Revolutionnaires (Revolutionary Left), have taken part in some of the rank-and-file initiatives. In the unions we are fighting for unity in action, democratic discussion and a clear programme of action.
A clear programme is also desperately needed on the political plane. After years of demoralising right-wing policies in government, the Socialist Party's leaders have started to talk left again. The party's ex-treasurer Henri Emmanuelli has energetically supported the call for a 35-hour week with no loss of pay. When he criticised the party's parliamentary group for voting for a 32-hour week with loss of pay, they said they hadn't meant to! The party supported the Air France strike, 'violence' and all, and newly-elected leader Rocard is calling for a 'social Europe, which will supposedly defend working people's interests. Yet, with memories of what these people did in government still fresh, it's not that convincing. The press comments that the party has to move left because Balladur has taken over the ground it used to occupy. Most potential activists are likely to take a similarly cynical view, although the left turn may help to revive the party's flagging vote. It was this employer-government offensive that revitalised the unions.
The Communist Party (PCF) might have been expected to profit from the Socialists' problems. But it faces an unprecedented internal crisis. The international justification for its existence has vanished with the collapse of Stalinism in Eastern Europe. And as general secretary Georges Marchais retires, the leadership is becoming increasingly factionalised. On the PCF's far, right are the 'refondateurs', long-term open advocates of class collaboration and the mixed economy. One of their members, an economics professor on the party's central committee (CC), runs a sort of brains trust with millionaires and Gaullist MPs. The CC majority are not this blatant but they hope to drag the party further to the right at its forthcoming congress. They will 20 • France propose a statement that holds fast the to party's line of a bloc of the 'people'
French against 'Germano-Ameri-can imperialism' and advocates a party that will be a home to anyone opposed to injustice and inequality "with all the diversity of their different Chevènement.
world views".
Even on the CC, voices are being raised against this tendency to copy the liberal degeneration of the British and Italian Communist parties. Much of this opposition however takes the form of nostalgia for the party's Stalinist past. But one opposition document, which has attracted 134 signatures, makes a serious attempt to analyse the party's 'velvet socialdemocratisation'. Several supporters of this text attended a recent Gauche Revolutionnaire meeting on the Italian Communist movement.
There's one more group on the left with members in the National Assembly and big-name leaders. This is ex-defence minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement's Mouvement des Citoyens (MdC), which split from the Socialist Party after the election. For a time it looked as if the MdC might team up with the refondateurs and a mix of other groups to form a substantial new party. But the audiences of their sometimes large meetings were sent away without being asked to do anything and they soon stopped going. Then Chevenement walked out of the joint organisation with the PCF dissidents. Worse still, the MdC's politics are aggressively nationalist. According to MdC leader Max Gallo, the Socialist government's main failing was its inability to 'reconcile the left and the nation'. The MdC's leaders are now desperately searching for Gaullists who will form a 'new republican pact, like the left's bloc with De Gaulle against Nazi occupation. Gauche Revolutionnaire opposes the destruction of France's industry and agriculture that will follow the signing of the GATT treaty. But in or out of international trading agreements, French capitalism is in a mess and is going to make working people pay. We aim to assemble those workers and young people who want to fight for a better world - which means a fight to get rid of capitalism, in France and internationally.
An annual joint subscription to the French Marxist paper L'Egalite and the theoretical journal Promethee is available for £15, with cheques made payable to ECIJ, from:
Promethee/L'Egalite, BP 33, 93001 Bobigny Cedex, France.
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