The following article is part of a political exchange that we from the ISL are developing with the comrades of the fraction L’Étincelle (The Spark) of the NPA in France. The NPA is going through strong internal debates and will have its next congress in December. On this occasion the comrades address the dynamic situation of the workers’ struggles and the trade union leaderships, which they will complement in the coming days with their reflections on the current French political situation.
En Francia se vienen dando muchas huelgas por aumentos salariales. El aumento de precios, oficialmente en torno al 6,5%, es en realidad mucho mayor para las clases trabajadoras. De hecho, las cifras oficiales son sólo promedios y la inflación es mucho mayor en los alimentos: ¡hasta un 180% por un paquete de fideos! Sin embargo, la comida es una parte importante del presupuesto obrero, mucho más que para las clases medias y los ricos.
In France there have been many strikes for wage increases. The price increase, officially around 6.5%, is actually much higher for the working classes. In fact, the official figures are only averages and inflation is much higher regarding food: up to 180% for noodles! Food is an important part of the workers’ budget, much more so than for the middle classes and the rich.
For the time being, the entrepreneurs of the largest companies grant bonuses to “compensate” for the rise in prices, encouraged by the government which exempts these bonuses from contributing to social security. But a bonus is a one-time thing. The wage increases granted during mandatory annual bargaining are lower than inflation and, moreover, will only occur in several months’ time, so that wages are always out of step with past inflation and do not anticipate future inflation. At present, inflation therefore translates into a real impoverishment of working class families, as is the case all over the world, even if it is somewhat less dramatic in France than in the poorest countries[1].
The convergence of the struggles: the great fear of the government, the bosses… and the trade union confederations
The reasons for their anger are not limited to the issue of wages: everywhere, the lack of personnel translates into an ever-increasing workload. In industry, services and hospitals, the working day has become exhausting, and countless workers are worn out. This phenomenon even affects the bosses. The wage issue has therefore been a trigger for the expression of workers’ discontent, which has resulted in a series of strikes since last spring.
Due to the policy of the unions, to which we will return later, these strikes were isolated. But last October, the strike reached all oil refineries in the country, quickly provoked a shortage of fuel at the service stations and thus put the strikes, which the mainstream media had hardly talked about until then, on the front page.
Employers and the government were frightened. Until then, the trade union confederations had done absolutely nothing to break the isolation of the strikes and give them common objectives – which was not very difficult since they were all about wages! – and try to coordinate them into a nationwide movement. That would have been enough to limit the risks. But the refinery strike, visible everywhere and paralyzing a part of the activity, risked becoming a pole of attraction for ongoing strikes, which could even give rise to new ones and lead to that national movement that employers and government fear: they had experienced it recently, during the movement against an umpteenth pension reform in 2019 that had aroused the anger of the workers. To relieve the pressure, the RATP (Parisian transport) unions called a strike on December 5, more than a month in anticipation, hoping that the anger would have time to relapse. The opposite happened and December 5 became the rallying point for many sectors, in particular the railroad workers. The result was an indefinite strike in February 2020. A month later, the first confinement by Covid-19 took place and, despite its declared will to force the passage, the government ended up abandoning its project, even though it had been voted, which is not without merit for the movement.
However, it is notable that the trade union confederations hardly played a role in this strike, which was organized simultaneously by unions from different sectors under pressure from the workers, especially the railroad unions who were at the head of the struggle: it was the longest railroad strike!
Spontaneous movements beyond the reach of the unions
For several years now, the largest social movements that broke out in the country did so outside the framework of trade union organizations. This is the case of the Yellow Vests movement, which mobilized massively almost every weekend from November 2018 to May-June 2019 and to which the trade union organizations were all opposed at the beginning, then some ended up accompanying it, but without ever having the initiative. This was also the case for the mobilization in hospitals during the Covid-19 crisis, initiated by the Inter-Emergency Collective, composed of emergency staff, outside any union influence. And it was largely the case of a teacher-student movement against the reform of the baccalaureate, accompanied this time from the beginning by the main teachers’ union, but without having taken the initiative.
Each time, sectors of the proletariat organized themselves alone and developed their struggle outside or against union frameworks.
A movement looking for itself
While the trade union organizations like the CFDT, the UNSA, the CGC, act as usual in the face of strikes, doing nothing to initiate them and then nothing to coordinate them, the CGT has adopted a different attitude. It is the CGT unions that take the initiative in the strikes in the refineries. Faced with the government’s anti-strike discourse and its declared will to repress the strike by intimidating the refinery workers to restore fuel supplies to the service stations, Philippe Martinez, secretary general of the CGT, urgently called for a national strike on October 14 for October 18. Despite the self-serving comments of some media, the day was a relative success with 150 rallies throughout the country.
The government had made a lot of noise about intimidating striking workers. In reality, for fear of the workers’ reactions, it was extremely prudent and in the end only intimidated a few strikers.
The CGT leadership, in the heat of the 18th, called for two more days of strikes and demonstrations: on October 27 and November 10. With the aim of broadening the mobilization, allowing it to grow from one success to another? Or to slowly reduce the pressure?
Both were possible. In any case, October 27 was a failure and November 10 went completely unnoticed. With one exception: Parisian transport was completely paralyzed.
For the time being, the fever the country experienced with the refinery strike has partially subsided. There are still strikes over wages, but none that are emblematic and can serve as a rallying point. To this must be added the fact that the workers of the different sectors have the impression that alone they can achieve more than in a general movement, which would escape them more because the output would be at the national level.
Can the unions give a new impulse?
Of course, anything is possible. They have already been able to mobilize very broadly “from above” when the bosses and the government gave the impression of wanting to act without them. That is to say, when their place as an “intermediary body” – the raison d’être of the trade union bureaucracies – seemed to be threatened by the ruling class. This was the case, in particular, during the great struggle of 2010 against the pension reform, a mobilization entirely led from above by the trade union confederations. At that time the bosses and the government were in the hot seat, and the latter mobilized first and foremost to defend their bureaucratic interests, effectively, by the way. But as soon as the bosses’ leaders reached out to them to begin negotiations on another issue – the employment of older workers – they organized the end of the movement. Their own objective had been achieved: but for the worse awaited the workers, who suffered a new defeat on pensions.
Today the bosses and the government are playing on the divisions between the so-called “reformist” unions (CFDT, UNSA, CGC) and the “fighting” unions (above all the CGT, but also the FSU -the main teachers’ union-, Solidaires and sometimes FO), paying homage to the former and denigrating the CGT.
Whatever the outcome of the struggles underway, the CGT showed them that they could always be counted on: in the face of the strike in the refineries, it raised the threat of a convergence of struggles, enough for the bosses to take it seriously. In Toulouse, a few hundred workers in the Airbus factories, of the more than 10,000 there (and more than 120,000 in the world), went on strike with the support of the CGT – at Airbus, the management favored the development of FO, which in that company has all the characteristics of a pro-employer union and has a very large majority. This worried the management enough to immediately grant a bonus of 1,500 euros to its employees not only in France, but also in Great Britain, Germany and Spain.
We can also say that, as of now, the CGT certainly demonstrated the necessity for the employers not to dispense with it.
What perspectives for the revolutionary militants?
For the moment, the perspective of convergence of the strikes for wages seems to have receded. But the anger is still there: the persistence of the wage strikes and the massive mobilization in Parisian transport prove it. The present level of consciousness, which must be described as corporatist, does not allow strikes to go beyond the local level, especially since some bosses of flourishing branches prefer to “pay not to see” the slightest sign of struggle.
But with the reorganization of capitalism on a world scale that we are witnessing, the leaders of the bourgeoisie have decided to further reduce the share of the workers in order to increase that of the ruling class. And the governments in their service organize this measure in every possible way. This situation has provoked social explosions all over the world. Partially also in France four years ago with the Yellow Vests movement which mobilized the most precarious layers of the popular classes. But it seems likely that in the relatively near future major social struggles will break out.
As long as the bourgeoisie retains the positions of the trade union bureaucracies, they will do nothing to make this happen and, in case it does, they will throw all their weight backwards making the workers give up.
The development of a broad workers’ movement necessarily depends on overcoming the trade union apparatuses. The revolutionaries must allow the workers to organize themselves democratically and independently of the union apparatuses. It is therefore an issue, from now on, that implies forming teams convinced that a movement must be controlled by those who make it, from the demands put forward, which must be fixed, to the way in which the workers organize themselves democratically, at the level of each company, but also among themselves, and to the means to be applied so that agreements they do not want are not reached behind their backs.
Jean-Jacques Franquier
(Fraction L’Étincelle of the NPA)
November 14, 2022
[1] Although France is a rich country, there are many poor and even working poor. About 1.8 million households receive the RSA (revenu social d’insertion, social insertion allowance), which is €598.54 for a single person and €1,077.37 for a couple with two children. Moreover, a third of those who would have it do not apply for it.
These figures should be compared with the net minimum wage of 1,329.05 euros and the poverty line of 1,102 euros per month for a single person (almost double the value of the RSA) and 2,314 euros for a couple with two children (more than double the RSA).