French Workers Strike Against Left Government's Givebacks
On February !, a government ordinance was issued reducing the legal workweek from 40 to 39 hours. •Paradoxically at first glance, this touched off thousands of strikes in the private sector, the public health services, and in the post office. The situation became serious enough to force the calling on February 10 of a tripartite meeting (the unions, the bosses, and the govern-
The ordinance was the first of a series of regulations that the SP-CP majority claims will make it possible to "move progressively toward a 35-hour week." The response by the workers forced the government to make some corrections. The president himself intervened to say that "no workers will get their wages cut because of a reduction in working
That is what the problem was, what explains the strikes, the government's gift to the workers was supposed to be paid for by lower wages.
This first shock brought home to many workers that they would have to fight to defend themselves, that they could not depend on the SP-CP majority in the government to defend them from the bosses. For the first time, many workers leaders and activists publicly criticized the new majority.
It is essential to understand this first experience of mass struggle against the government to see how the situation is evolving in France.
After the victory of the left in the May 10 presidential elections, in conditions where there were more than two
8 immediate steps to be taken. It expected that the minimum wage would be increased by 25% to catch up with inflation, that the workweek would be cut, and that jobs would be increased. The new premier, Mauroy, raised the minimum wage by only 5%. But at the same time, he promised to "take command of the war against unemployment."
In practice, he tried to negotiate adjustments in the labor law with the bosses to encourage them to hire. But despite millions of francs in aid (subsidies or exemptions from paying contributions to the unemployment funds or Social Security), the layoffs continued at the same rate as in the last months of the Giscard government--one worker laid off every minute, that is 200,000 more jobless between June and November 198l.
It became clear that the government was not going to be able to offer a shorter warkweek as the result of negotiations with the bosses, as the result of a "social consensus."
The bosses in fact made very harsh demands. They maintained that the workers should pay for the reduction in hours to the tune of wage cuts equalling 50% to 70% of the pay for the reduced time.
Various "adjustments" in the laws were also demanded. The bosses wanted a new definition of "night work" more favorable to them, "special teams for weekend work, " a big expansion of part-time jobs, the right to change work schedules over a year period, the right to demand overtime without any administrative or erage of 2.8 per week out of the 47 workweeks in a year), with a certain additional margin for overtime above this.
In all, to meet these demands by the bosses, it has been estimated that at least 50 articles in the Labor Code would have to be overturned, as well as all the safeguards for the workers included in the 40-hour workweek law passed by the Popular Front government in 1936.
The CFDT, the union confederation in which the SP has invested its greatest hopes, wanted at all cost to assure the success of these negotiations with the employers. Nonetheless, the majority of the member unions and locals refused to go along. At the congresses of many of the member unions, motions condemning the national leadership got between 35% and 50% of the votes.
The leadership of the CGT, the CP-controlled union, rejected the bases of the agreement with the bosses. participated in all the negotiation sessions in all branches of industry. But it put forward the demand for cutting the workweek immediately to 38 hours. So, on the basis of this less scandalous position than that of its rival, the CFDT, it was able to limit the hostile reactions in in its own ranks.
Basing itself on the experience of these negotiations, the LCR, French section of the Fourth International, began in June to build a campaign for a 35-hour week without any quid pro quo for the bosses. It has been getting a growing response.
At the end of November, in order to avoid a parliamentary debate that would have provided a focus for the politicalization that has been developing around the questions of the workweek and unemployment, the government changed its tactic. It could not get a law expressing class collaboration. Therefore, it would issue ordinances, government decrees issued without being debated in the National Assembly, but which had to be voted on later.
Hidden in the fine print, the ordinance included everything the bosses wanted in terms of work rules. guideline laid down on wage cuts was that the lowest category of wage earners should lose nothing. Everything else was "open to negotiation."
From the moment the Council of Ministers adopted the ordinance on lanuary 13, a lot of small bosses wanted to put it into practice immediately. This produced a crucial test. of workplaces were hit by strikes. following two weeks, the strike wave grew. It hit big engineering companies such as Chausson (which has several plants with 4,500 workers) and the Dassault and Schlumberger trusts, but also companies with a few hundred workers. It spread to the big stores in the Paris region and in several other urban areas, textiles, the food industry, etc. Among the public workers, the customs people walked out and the government sent in riot police finally to replace them. There were actions in the post offices to bureaucrats did not retreat. That happened in the Peugeot-Citroen factories, where the fortieth hour has been paid for by a cut of 66% of one hour's wage.
In some small businesses, the arrogance of the bosses got much worse as soon as it became clear that the national union leaderships were not going to respond to the strike wave by issuing any general slogans. The bosses preferred to face sit-in strikes (Mas-Bidermann, garment in Toulouse, Motta, food industry in L'Ome) to minimize concessions true in some engineering factories where the workforce is largely immigrants, such as Fulmen in Clichy and Hutchinson in Loiret. The same thing happened in the Isigny dairy in Normandy.
In such cases, in order to maintain a relationship of forces traditionally in their favor, the bosses resorted to extreme means. In Isigny, they sent paramilitary commandos into clear out the workers. At Fulmen Clichy, they also mounted an assault. An Algerian worker was killed.
In the Leleu factory in Lyon, the "forces of order" cleared out the workers on the request of the prefect, as was the practice under Giscard. In the meantime, the new president of the employers association had called on the government to "restore order" in the factories.
In contrast to those areas where workers suffered more or less important defeats because of their isolation, in some cities, owing to special conditions, street demonstrations developed against the bosses' demands.. This happened in Blois and Cherbourg. In both cases, while the banners carried the workers minimum demands, the slogans chanted centered around the call for the 35-hour
This strike wave has put the focus of public attention on the question whether the workers should "tighten their belts" in order to make it possible to create more jobs for the unemployed. ister of labor, Jean Auroux, has come out for such a position. Pierre Mauroy has done the same thing in a different way. He says that it is necessary to carry through the measure for 39 hours work for 40 hours pay but that this sort of thing cannot continue. In particular for those enterprises that are not very competitive the workers must prepare themselves to "make sacrifices" to help
This policy is strongly supported by the National Bureau of the CFDT, but it is running into strong resistance at the lower levels.
Such appeals to the workers to accept austerity are unlikely to get very far since the workers have now recognized on a much larger scale than in the last quarter of 1981 that the government is not their representative and defender.
We are still far from g workers mobilization based on an understanding that there is an alternative to the present policy of the SP-CP majority. But the conditions for this have now become more favorable.