FRANCE: A government on the ropes

November 17, 1993
Issue 

Murray Smith, Paris

"The executive is in tatters, the ministers squabble, the [parliamentary] majority is rent by divisions". The quotation is not from one of the leaders of the mass movement against the CPE (First Employment Contract) that has shaken France over the last few weeks. It is from the April 7 editorial of the prestigious French daily Le Monde.

"France is suffering from a dangerous power vacuum", the Le Monde editorial warned. This comment accurately reflects the situation today. The government has not given in by withdrawing the CPE, under which employers will be legally able to sack workers under the age of 26 without reason during their first two years in a job.

But it is reeling under the pressure of a movement that has led to the occupation or blockading of most French universities and high schools by their students and a series of days of demonstrations and strikes backed by the unions, each of which has brought more people onto the streets than the one before.

On March 28, there were widespread strikes and an estimated 3 million demonstrators poured onto the streets of 135 different cities and towns. This represented, according to the next day's Le Monde (which like most other papers did not appear on March 28 due to strike action), the biggest demonstration in recent French history — bigger even than those in 1968.

Just a week later, on April 4, the next day of protest action saw even more people on the streets. In between, French President Jacques Chirac addressed the nation on television. He announced that he was promulgating the CPE law — then asked the government not to apply it until it was modified, proposing that the period when young workers could be sacked be reduced to one year and that employers should have to give a reason — without that impinging on their right to sack.

Chirac's attempt at minimal concessions was unanimously rejected by trade unions and student organisations. "What Chirac has done is not enough", said 18-year-old Rebecca Konforti, among a group of students who jammed tables against the door of their high school in southern Paris to block entry. "They're not really concessions, he just did it to calm the students."

In the following days, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who had introduced the CPE, was dispossessed of the dossier, which was handed to his arch-rival, interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy. Under Sarkozy's direction, parliamentary leaders of the governing Union for the Presidential Majority (UMP) party have been receiving delegations of unions and student organisations.

The government and its parliamentary majority are divided between those who want to simply withdraw the CPE, those who think it can survive in a watered-down form and those who want to propose an alternative. For the moment, the government is trying to avoid purely and simply withdrawing the measure. The highly respectable Conference of University Presidents has however called on it "to finally pronounce the word that the students and their unions have been demanding". The word in question being of course "withdrawal".

The government has been fought to a standstill by the mass movement, but will only give in if it is forced to. Student organisations have called for the movement to continue and intensify. And in fact, over recent days students have been engaging in forms of mass civil disobedience — blocking motorways, railway stations and other public places.

The united front against the CPE is very broad and has so far remained solid — embracing all the unions, the student organisations and the entire left, from the reformist Socialist Party to the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR).

The unions are standing firm on the demand for withdrawal, described by Bernard Thibault, leader the General Confederation of Labour (CGT), France's biggest union federation, as "non-negotiable".

Meeting on April 5, the Intersyndicale, the united front of 12 trade unions and student organisations organising the mass protests against the CPE, issued a declaration entitled, "The mobilisation is neither suspended nor repealed". The Intersyndicale announced its support for the next student day of action on April 11 and agreed to meet again on April 10, warning that if the CPE was not withdrawn there would be further mobilisations and that "no means of action is excluded".

The enormous mass movement of the last few weeks has created a veritable social and political crisis. It has expressed on the streets and in the schools the same rejection of neoliberal policies that led to the defeat of the proposed European constitution in last May's referendum.

In an article headlined "Capitalism under fire" in the March 30 International Herald Tribune, William Pfaff, the IHT's Paris-based political commentator, wrote:

"The demonstrations by French students, workers and would-be workers, with unions and the French left riding on their bandwagon, have amounted to a spontaneous revolt in France against something that I suspect few of the participants fully appreciate.

"The protests' ostensible purpose is to force withdrawal of a minor change in this French government's employment policy, but they have taken on a radically different significance.

"The crowds in the street contest a certain form of capitalist economy that a large part, if not the majority, of French society regards as a danger to national standards of justice and, above all, to 'equality'...

"They are not alone in this concern. A kindred debate about 'models' of capitalism has been a persistent factor in Germany, now suffering labor unrest, and in the European Commission itself, which since EU expansion to 25 members, has tipped away from the traditional European 'social' model. Even in Britain last Tuesday there was the biggest strike since the 1920s, on the question of pensions."

In an editorial in its March 31 issue, the London Economist informed its probably bemused business executive readers, in a tone of exasperation, that only 36% of French people thought the "free market" was the best possible economic system, as against around two-thirds of people in Britain, Germany and the US.

This mass opposition to neoliberal capitalism is the fundamental problem of the French ruling class. And over the last few weeks a new generation of youth has come of age, not only demonstrating and occupying but organising mass meetings and engaging in intensive political discussion. Unity between workers and students has from the start been much stronger than in previous movements. This renewed combativeness and rejection of neoliberalism will re-emerge over the next months and years, in the streets and no doubt in next year's presidential and parliamentary elections.

[Murray Smith is a member of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR).]

From Green Left Weekly, April 12, 2006.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.


You need Green Left, and we need you!

Green Left is funded by contributions from readers and supporters. Help us reach our funding target.

Make a One-off Donation or choose from one of our Monthly Donation options.

Become a supporter to get the digital edition for $5 per month or the print edition for $10 per month. One-time payment options are available.

You can also call 1800 634 206 to make a donation or to become a supporter. Thank you.