While there is an urgent need to raise wages, freeze prices and rents; while the energy and climate crisis is exploding, Macron’s government has made the Parliament pass two bills that contradict the basic needs of the population. As usual, neither the NUPES nor the trade union bureaucracies called for mobilization during this summer nor in the first days of September. While the reformist unions are going to negotiate with Macron at the National Council of Refoundation, the CGT, the FSU and Solidaires call not to demonstrate until D-Day, September 29, and nothing else, while LFI plans to mobilize on a Saturday in mid-October, just before the school vacations. This calendar is nothing but a plan of support and capitulation to the imperatives set by Macron-Borne and the bosses’ entity MEDEF. The masses will be able to disrupt all these traps and sweep away these obstacles…
The emergency law for the protection of purchasing power was voted on August 4, 2022 by the joint National Assembly-Senate commission. This general law reveals a whole arsenal of anti-worker measures. From this point of view, the component of “protection of the standard of living of the French” is essentially due to the announcement of marginal, punctual, temporary benefits, exempt from taxes and social security contributions. All these measures, added to those of the reform of the finance law for 2022 (dated 16/8/22) granting an additional 44 billion to the State budget, are characterized by very small increases in salaries and pensions, below the rise in inflation rates (which now exceeds 6%) and the granting of optional and derisory bonuses. All of this without blocking the rise in food, energy or rent prices! Hereunder are the main details of these two laws:
No indexation of salaries and pensions to inflation!
In fact, there is no permanent measure against inflation. While candidate Macron had promised the indexation of pensions to inflation, President Macron decided a 4% increase in basic pension assets, Active Solidarity Income (RSA), family allowances or allowance for disabled adults was enough. Scheduled for July, this increase is long overdue and is due on September 9….
4% for basic private pensions, with no measures for supplementary pensions or state pensions… with inflation at 6.1% and which could exceed 10% by the end of the year!
As for active state employees, the planned increase (3.5%) does not compensate for the loss of purchasing power estimated by the CGT of at least 10%, following the freezing of the index point put in place since 2007….
For the private sector, Macron wants to encourage, through a tool for restructuring the professional branches, social partners to regularly raise their minimums by branch to the level of the SMIC (minimum wage), after having encouraged the opposite in previous years.
As a reminder, the indexation of wages to the price level was abolished in 1983 by the Socialist government headed by Pierre Mauroy, in the name of the fight against inflation. Even today, economists talk about the inflationary spiral saying that, if employers raise wages, it would push up prices, and so on. But, however, here is a solution: block price increases!
No price freeze on basic necessities and rents!
Far from freezing or lowering prices, the government is betting on a “reasonable” increase in energy costs: extension of the “fuel discount” until the end of 2022 (30 cents per liter in September and October; 10 cents per liter in November and December); maintenance in 2022 of the tariff shield on energy prices implemented at the end of 2021 (capping the increase in electricity bills at 4% and freezing the price of gas at the October 2021 level). It also grants various tax-free aids: emergency aid for heating homes with fuel oil (230 million euros) and doubles for two years the cap on the exemption of the fuel bonus paid by employers…
The increase in rents cannot exceed 3.5% (only until June 30, 2023!), not offset by the 3.5% revaluation of the Personalized Housing Allowance (APL) that the government had previously reduced…
Vouchers, dispensations, tax exemptions
For the rest, these are bonuses exempt from social security contributions (former Macron bonus now called bonus de partition of value increased to 3,000 or 6,000 euros per year, optional and distributed according to the goodwill of the boss: exceptional bonus by the State of 100 euros per household and 50 euros per child for those who collect social benefits…).
The law also abolishes or reduces employer’s contributions to Social Security (possibility of overtime with reduction of such contributions for companies with 20 to 249 workers; definitive abolition of contributions, up to 550 euros per year, for the self-employed with an income lower than or equal to the SMIC…)
We ask for wage increases, not charity: 40 million euros (out of 44 billion!) are destined to food aid associations.
The waiver of social security contributions and tax exemption are the government’s means to reduce costs for employers and the State as much as possible… with its corollary which will then justify all future reforms: the increase in the deficit of Social Security and the State!
Finally, these are measures that do not cost the employers and the government anything, since these are sums that already belong to the workers: possible and exceptional unblocking of the worker’s savings until the end of 2020; possible use of restaurant tickets for food purchases until the end of 2023.
And at the top it all: the possibility of buying back RTT days[1] (which will be exempt from income tax and social contributions until the end of 2025). Fortunately, Jospin and Aubry annualized working time… otherwise it would never have been possible!
Let us not forget the various legislative clauses of this emergency law to protect purchasing power: “consumer protection” measures (facilitation of online termination; fight against illicit commercial practices, etc.); measures on the transport of goods by road; measures on used oil as fuel; measures on “energy sovereignty”.
Use of fossil fuels
Let us dwell on these “energy sovereignty” measures and the security measures adopted for electricity and gas supply, as well as regulated access to nuclear energy. Some of the measures refer to the storage of natural gas to deal with any “threat to the security of natural gas or electricity supply”, to emergency and exceptional measures allowing the State to decide in these situations. Apart from any democratic decision or decision controlled by the Parliament, the government, probably in the Defense Council from September 2, will decide the model of energy usage: which uses are essential, which are useless….
In the law on purchasing power it was decided to use fossil fuels: requisitioning of gas-fired power plants for a maximum of four years, creation of a floating LNG terminal off Le Havre, restarting of the last two coal-fired power plants: that of Cordemais (Loire-Atlantique) still in operation and that of Saint-Avold (Moselle) which was to be closed last March….
The LNG terminal project is led by TotalÉnergies: article 14 of the law repeals the obligation of environmental studies and allows administrative simplifications to accelerate its creation in order to increase imports of shale gas from the United States and gas from Qatar. An unsustainable project they say… It will only be ready a year and a half from now and will require at least 10 years to be amortized and 20 to be profitable. It is a durable use of fossil fuels! On the other hand, there won’t be measures to research and develop renewable energies!
On the other hand, in the finance law, the total renationalization of EDF (at a cost of 9.7 billion euros) will allow the State to assume the heavy debt of the company and to orient the production of electricity to nuclear by investing in a new program of reactors. It is always the same principle: to the private sector and the capitalists, profits; to the State and the people, debt and investments!
Among the various legislative offensives: if the destruction of preventive archeology was narrowly avoided thanks to the vigilance of the employees of the sector, the capitalist adjustment program is launched with the suppression from 2022 of the contribution to the public audiovisual (television tax), endangering the independence and the existence of the public audiovisual sector but also, at the initiative of the Senate, an item of 20 million euros to launch the site of the biometric card Vitale to “fight against social fraud”!
These two laws definitely have nothing to do with defending and increasing the purchasing power of the working class. The unemployed are excluded from the system and bear the full weight of the unemployment insurance reform. The lowering of their assets as a result of this reform is not a priori sufficient for the government, which is considering a new reform in this area very soon.
While Parliament was voting on these two laws, the government was sharpening its weapons to further lower the cost of pensions by raising the retirement age and merging the schemes…
There is only one answer: a general strike
In the face of these attacks, it is clear that the NUPES has only gesticulated in Parliament. Waging a “battle of amendments”, which of course produced no results, while excluding the direct intervention of the masses to raise the balance of forces against Macron, the right, the extreme right and the MEDEF.
While the summer was plagued by multiple strikes in France for wage increases, as in the rest of Europe, no trade union bureaucracy dared to call a general strike during the time of the parliamentary debate or even since the beginning of the school year.
On the contrary, from June onwards, the workers were called for a big mobilization… on September 29! Mélenchon, who supposedly wanted to fight, now calls for his “March against expensive life” in October! Macron’s provocations about “the end of abundance” did not change any of that: the strike of the 29th will have no continuity.
The only resignation of the political and trade union organizations, apart of course from the CFDT, the CFDT and the CGC, which did go, will be that of not going to the National Council of Refoundation (CNR) convened by Macron on September 8. Another false consultation of the French people drawn by lot where Macron wanted to play his favorite tune, in his shirtsleeves: that of the hero dragging the nation behind him! It got off to a bad start…
Anyway, if the 29th is not followed by a 30th, nothing will come of this mobilization! For us, La Commune, the immediate task is the satisfaction of the needs of the working class by an emergency plan, by means of the general strike until we win:
General increase of 500 euros net in wages, social benefits and pensions, on equal terms for men and women.
No salary or pension below 2,000 euros net.
Indexation of salaries and pensions to the price level.
Return to retirement age of 60, for 37.5 years of contributions and a mobility of 75%.
Reduction and freezing of prices of basic necessities and abolition of VAT.
Immediate return of the Solidarity Tax on Fortune (ISF) so that the crisis is paid by those responsible for it: the capitalists.
Unconditional defense of Social Security and the deferred salary, based on the 1945 model.
[1] Rest days as a result of the Reduction of Working Time.