It is significant that France Insoumise and all eight main trade unions CGT, CFDT, FO, CFE-CGC, CFTC, Unsa, Solidaires, FSU as well as student unions followed the call of feminist organizations and the platform ‘Grève Féministe’ (feminist strike) to support and mobilize for 8 March, including with calls for a strike. This is testament to the relentless efforts of feminists for the organizations of the workers’ movement to link the struggle against gender oppression with the economic oppression of women and the working class in general. Let’s use the feminist strike as a catalyst for broader resistance against all forms of oppression, repression, exploitation and the wide range of attacks launched and planned by the Macron regime on the working class and oppressed. Strikes and mobilizations in national education, health care, the public sector and many more show the potential for this.
Against the backdrop of a faltering capitalist system marred by escalating imperialist tensions, environmental crises, and economic stagnation in Europe, to name just a few, the ruling class has intensified its assault on the working class and marginalized communities. It had to resort to the Bonapartist Article 49.3, which allows the Prime Minister to pass a bill without a vote in the National Assembly to force through the pension reform. These attacks also serve the goal of breaking resistance and cutting across the steps forward that the working class has made with the refinery strikes in autumn 2022 and especially the pension reform movement, from which the working class emerged qualitatively and quantitatively strengthened despite not winning that battle.
Warning: weakness invites aggression!
Unfortunately, the response from the side of the union leaderships to the recent wave of attacks has not been sufficient, especially in struggles against oppression. They waited too long to join the anti-racist mobilizations after the racist police murder of Nahel, which made it easier for the ruling class to turn the narrative and resort to brutal repression. Most union leaderships did not adequately join the struggle against the racist and sexist abaya ban or even sanctioned it like Sophie Binet. Most union leaderships did not mobilize for the 14 January demo against the racist immigration law, which was organized primarily by committees of sans-papiers. Instead the sans-papiers were asked to join the union demonstration on 21 January, which not only was decided later without sufficient coordination with the sans-papiers collectives, but also did not take up the most important demands for which sans-papiers have been struggling for years. This approach was criticized in a statement by sans-papiers collectives and is a missed opportunity and at the same time a step back on the path towards uniting the working class in France across all nationalities, communities and genders in the fight against all oppressions and exploitation.
Moreover, union leaderships have generally taken an approach too strongly focused on social dialogue instead of escalating class struggle to win above inflation pay rises and better working conditions. This became evident for example around the Social Conference in October, around which much more would have been possible. Only three days before the start of the conference on 16 October, 200,000 people took to the streets to demonstrate against austerity, for pay rises, pensions and for gender equality following the call by the common front of France’s eight largest trade unions (CFDT, CGT, FO, CFE-CGC, CFTC, Unsa, FSU and Solidaires). Not only would a stronger mobilization have been possible, but the union leaderships also did not use the mobilization to escalate the struggle.
If this approach continues, it risks the gains made by the working class through the movement against the pension reform and can leave the class and especially young and oppressed people in a weaker position in the face of new attacks. The Macron regime is unrolling a general austerity offensive that will hit the most vulnerable the hardest, pushing ahead with its authoritarian school and youth reforms and preparing wide ranging attacks on the labor law. To this anti-social menu they have added stronger repression, all served up by a government that has shifted significantly to the right, which, alongside its policies and impunity for police violence, has strengthened the confidence of the far right to take violent action.
Our strongest weapon against these attacks as well as against all forms of oppression and exploitation is united class struggle, based on mass demonstrations and generalized and coordinated strikes from below, bringing together social movements and trade union struggles. The working class needs to be represented in its entirety on all levels of the struggle including in terms of demands and program. Fighting side by side in such a way, we can show in action what the slogan “an injury to one is an injury to all” stands for.
No cake for the working class and oppressed without organized struggle
While official inflation data is down, the cost of living crisis for the majority of the working class, youth and oppressed people continues and the planned attacks will only aggravate the situation if not resisted. Electricity costs increased on average by 10% in February after state subsidies were scrapped to “protect public finances, which together with three other price increases (4% in February 2022, 15% in February 2023 and 10% in August 2023) amounts to an increase in the electricity price of 43–44% over two years. At the same time, real wages have fallen in the private and public sectors in the past two years according to Insee data and a Harris Interactive survey from February showed that 87% of French people had changed their eating habits and 65% had cut back on spending on leisure activities. With European bankruptcy levels unseen since 2008–2009, unemployment is on the rise. The group BCPE expects that 250.000 jobs are on the line in 2024 and ING estimates that the unemployment rate in France will rise from 7.3% in 2023 to 7.8% in 2024 and 8.0% in 2025.
After growth forecasts for the French economy were lowered from 1.4% to 1%, French economy minister Bruno Le Maire did not waste time in making clear that it will be the working class and oppressed who should pay the bill. He announced additional spending cuts of €10 billion on top of the €16 billion cuts that were already included in the 2024 budget last autumn, while the companies of CAC40 have distributed a record €97.1 billion euros to their shareholders in 2023 and public subsidies to private companies have reached unseen heights (an unprecedented €54 billion are allocated for the plan d’investissement France 2030).
The budget for environmental and energy transition has been slashed by €2 billion, which they creatively justified with their prior removal of more than 140,000 homes from the list of homes that need retrofitting. Labor and employment has been cut by €1.1 billion and the spending for national and higher education is cut by €692 million and €900 million respectively. This is a frontal attack on the standard of living and quality of life of the working class.
Cutting almost €700 million in national education translates to 8,000–11,000 job cuts, while trade unions are actually calling for 2,000 more teachers and 1,700 additional AESHs (assistants for students with special needs) and school buildings are in horrible conditions. The budget for SNU (General National Service has existed since 2019 on a voluntary basis. On 16 January 2024, Macron confirmed his plans to make it obligatory for all students as part of his broader plan for “civic rearmament’), and school uniforms however, is not touched of course; the former will cost €110 million in 2024, and an estimated €1.75 billion when generalized in 2026, uniforms for all school students would cost €1 billion by 2026.
These new austerity measures come in addition to the already announced and planned attacks like the plan to cut €6 billion in social security spending. Among other things, this austerity offensive in the health care sector includes the doubling of medical deductibles from the end of March, the reduction of reimbursements of long-term illnesses (ALD), and the racist plan to replace state medical aid with the much more limited Emergency Medical Assistance. Doctors Without Borders explains: “State Medical Aid (AME) is a system that enables foreign nationals with no health insurance entitlement, and who are already in an extremely precarious and vulnerable situation, to access healthcare. As part of the Asylum and Immigration Act, the government is proposing to abolish this scheme and replace it with emergency medical assistance (AMU), which would focus on the most serious situations, subject to payment of a stamp duty.”
These attacks on the public hospital and social security system show once again very clearly that the feminist posing of the Macron regime around the constitutionalization of the “freedom guaranteed to women to have recourse to an abortion” (note that it says liberty and not right and that the language does not include transgender men and non-binary people) is just that, a feminist veneer, as the cuts reduce the access to abortion and health care services. In this context, the recent protests in the health care sector, such as the mobilizations of visiting nurses, for example on 17 February, or the unlimited strike of the emergency department staff at Le Mans hospital that started on 29 February, are all the more important.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal (Macron had to replace Elisabeth Borne and reshuffle the government in early 2024) also announced an anti-poor social housing reform that will further reduce access to social housing for the most vulnerable and he plans to cut the amount and duration of unemployment benefits, which would be the fourth attack on the unemployment insurance since the election of Macron. This comes in addition to Macron’s plan for “a tightening of unemployment compensation rules, in the event of refusal of a job offer”. The latter will be part of “Act II of the labor market reform”, which, it has been announced, will be presented in spring and seems to be planned as a historic new offensive against the Labor Law. With this, the Macron regime plans to open the door further, for now starting with certain categories of small and medium-sized enterprises, for company level agreements to replace sectoral agreements, for example those relating to minimum wages and working hours. The second major attack on workers and union rights already announced for the Act II law is the plan to increase all thresholds concerning works council rights, “in particular to raise the threshold for entitlement to greater CSE rights/power from 50 to 250 employees: operating budget, right to expert appraisal, consultations, etc.”, as explained by a worker representative.
Historic wave of repression
The attacks on the labor law are part of a general offensive against the workers movement. We are seeing a historic wave of repression against the trade union movement, “not seen since the post-war period” as denounced by Sophie Binet, President of the CGT trade union. More than 1,000 CGT activists are on trial and for the first time since the 1950s, national trade union leaders have been summoned by the police. While the repression is aimed primarily at the most combative and progressive sectors and trade unionists — for example CGT Mines and Energy strikers are under attack for their “Robin Hood” actions during the pension battle as well as trade unionists in solidarity with Palestine — this is a threat to the whole workers’ movement. Bosses have also increasingly tried to fire worker representatives that enjoy special protection against dismissal, the failed attempt of the industrial bakery Neuhauser to get rid of the combative CGT unionist Christian Porta is just the tip of the iceberg. However, this case also showed how we can fight back against the dirty attacks of the bosses: with combative workers’ solidarity. Yet other elements of the offensive against the workers movement are the government’s attacks on the democratic right to strike with the requisitioning of striking workers, like refinery workers during the movement against pension reform or workers at ArcelorMittal who were striking for higher wages in December, and law proposals aimed at banning strikes for certain times per decree.
But we can assure you, the repression is of course not reserved for the trade unions, social movements also get their fare share. Environmental activists who mobilized against the expansion of the A69 autoroute faced brutal police violence including deprivation of food and water, students who mobilized for Palestine and against the immigration law have faced the repression of their political initiatives, and Aurore Bergé, ironically the minister for Equality between Women and Men and the Fight against Discrimination, openly threatened the entire feminist movement. At the end of February, she announced that the government would “scrutinize” all feminist associations and cut public funding “if there is the slightest ambiguity about what was said on October 7”. On March 2 she had to admit defeat as her investigation did not yield any results.
While Bergé claims she had no sinister motives and “denies any instrumentalization”, her failed offensive was launched exactly in a time when we have seen feminists in France fighting back against the rightwing backlash and in the period leading up to the Grève Féministe on 8 March. In January, feminists protested in over 30 cities against Depardieu and the disgusting support he received from Macron and 50 prominent figures of the cultural realm. This helped bring about a new #metoo cinema movement in France with more and more testimonies still coming up. Its significance and impact is also reflected in the fact that authorities decided to investigate some cases despite their statutes of limitations having already expired. The attempt by Macron and others to protect Depardieu and their old world — in which they reserve impunity of abuse for themselves and cynically exploit sexual violence to further their racist agenda — backfired on the ideological level. Let’s channel that rage to win real improvements and stop the other attacks of the ruling class. The potential is clearly there.
Possibility of a wider social explosion and generalized struggle
A recent IFOP survey found that 49% of the people in France “describe their state of mind with regard to France’s current economic and social situation primarily as “revolted”” and 78% “believe that France could experience a social explosion in the coming months”, which is 4% more than in May 2023 during the pension reform movement. The multitude of strikes in the recent period underline this mood further and show the best method to build a balance of forces that can win improvements.
Next to the powerful movement in the agricultural sector, actions in health care and the ongoing movement in the education sector, we have seen strikes, often for above inflation pay rises in the context of the obligatory annual bargaining rounds (Négociations Annuelles Obligatoires — NAO, applies to companies with union representation), in multiple sectors. These include for example a national strike at all ID Logistics sites on March 7 following strikes at several workshops and warehouses, the renewable strike of the Eiffel tower workers in February as well as strikes in industry including at ArcelorMittal, Alstom or the aeronautics company Safran.
In the transport sector, things are also everything but quiet. Bus drivers at the Cars Lacroix company in the Val-d’Oise department went on strike for the first time in 70 years (!), 90% of the drivers participated in the three day strike (26–29 February). Following several rounds of strikes at RATP (public transport in Paris and the Île-de-France region) last year, the CGT union issued in January a 7-month strike notice from February 5 until 9 September. This necessary measure ensures the possibility to react quickly to attacks and go on strike the next day if necessary, which would otherwise be impossible due to the very restrictive strike conditions for transport employees (e.g. five days of strike notice). At SNCF (National Company of the French Railways) we have seen strikes of technicentres, controllers and signal workers, often organized through grassroots groups such as CNA (Collectif National des ASCT). While it’s positive that workers are self-organizing, the strikes in January and February remained largely isolated per “job-category” and on a regional scale. To build a stronger balance of forces as well as generalize and further politicize the struggle, it is necessary to organize collectively across sectors/categories, companies and regions.
The movement in the education sector that has been developing since January across the country, strengthened in the Ile-de-France region since 26 February following the call of the common front of education trade unions of the Seine-Saint-Denis department for renewable strikes. It has a lot of potential for broader struggle. National education strikes have already been organized on 25 January, 1 February and 6 February. The common front of education trade unions (FSU, UNSA Education, SGEN-CFDT, CGT Educ’action and Sud Education) denounced “no pay rise, knowledge clash symbolizing a backward-looking, conservative school model that runs counter to the interests of students and staff alike”. In February we have seen “collège mort” (dead college) protests in colleges across multiple regions in France, for example in Normandy, Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Hauts-de-France. Workers at the Anatole-France school in Marseilles organized daily lunchtime demonstrations for a week in February, their protest continues. In the Ile-de-France region, the movement has spread to the Val-d’Oise department (95) and there are calls to extend it to other departments (75, 91, 94). Combative methods of struggle are used. We have seen renewable strikes and general assemblies at several schools bringing together hundreds of teachers, students and parents, leaflets in multiple languages and the plan for a collective demonstration at the Ministry of Education on 7 March. There is also strong and active solidarity for the strikes from many parents, as can be seen with the “lycée désert” (deserted high schools, when parents don’t send their kids to school to support the strikers) actions and a demonstration on Saturday 9 March organized by parents.
The next big day of action in the education sector will be the public sector strike on 19 March that is called for by all public service unions including the common front of national education unions (FSU, UNSA Éducation, SGEN-CFDT, CGT Educ’action, SUD éducation) as well as the National Trade Union of Scientific Researchers (Syndicat national des chercheurs scientifiques — SNCS). Some researchers denounce “the cuts as “bloodshed” that “confirms the antisocial and climaticidal orientations of this government”.”
Generalize the movement
With the dynamic of the actions of the last weeks that showed strong levels of self-organization and the battle cry for equality and liberation of the feminist strike on 8 March still ringing in our ears, let’s use the public sector strike on 19 March to build a more generalized movement across sectors with an escalating plan of action.
For that it’s crucial that trade unions mobilize on all levels and strengthen and initiate self-organizing at the base. We need democratic discussions on actions, demands and strategy at workplaces as well as on a sectoral and cross-sector level.
In the national education sector, it’s important to link the demands for more financial and human resources with the question of working and learning conditions. Demands against police violence, racism and all oppression, are needed to push back against the recent wave of divide and rule, to help mobilize students, teachers and parents with migrant backgrounds for whom “two Frances” is a brutal everyday reality, and thereby overall strengthen class unity, which is crucial to build the strongest movement possible.
The austerity offensive must be opposed in its entirety to facilitate the linking up of the national education and public sector struggle with other areas such as higher education, health care, transport or also climate and environmental struggles. Taking the feminist strike as inspiration, that underlines again that oppression and exploitation are inherently linked, it would be an important step forward if climate and environmental groups actively support the strikes of transport workers. A powerful example for this was recently given by public transport workers and climate activists in Germany who joined forces “for a week of strike action culminating in a collective nationwide walkout and climate protest on March 1”.
A broad and generalized movement of resistance against the austerity offensive, all forms of oppression, repression and exploitation would also go a long way to demask the fake social veneer of Le Pen’s “National Rally” (RN) with which they try to taper over their anti-working-class politics.
The importance of grassroots organizing: Anti-Macron committees everywhere!
All too often, trade unions still concentrate on their “strongholds”, but while these can and must play a leading role, it is absolutely crucial to seek to draw in their wake the less mobilized sectors and strata, especially the youth. An escalating plan of action moving progressively towards the construction of a general strike could have been drawn up during the movement against the pension reform. During the movement, we proposed building anti-Macron struggle and strike committees everywhere, in workplaces, schools and colleges, in banlieues (socially deprived neighborhoods). Broad-based committees, open to all, to build the struggle democratically, involving everyone actively in its preparation and organization. That’s how a real general strike could have succeeded — Macron would have really been at pains to resist it.
An offensive program to change the system
It is important to arm the movement with an offensive program, starting with the necessary demand for nationalization of the energy and financial sectors under the democratic control of workers and society. Only then will the working class, young people and the oppressed be able to decide democratically what is produced and how. Nationalization under democratic control — as distinct from the transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector, as the government has done by “nationalizing” the remaining private stake in the French electricity company (EDF) — is also a prerequisite for preventing capital flight, ensuring that the working class has an overview of all financial flows, and that available resources and the wealth produced are invested in what is socially necessary, such as affordable, green energy.
For a democratic socialist society
Ecological planning is urgently needed; it must be part of a general democratic economic planning of society: directing production towards what is necessary, towards the real needs of the vast majority of the population and those of our planet. We need to discuss and move towards another type of economic system, towards a society free from exploitation and the law of profit: a democratic socialist society. This is the only one capable of ensuring that a handful of ultra-rich people do not decide everything according to their own interests. It’s the only one capable of ensuring the harmonious existence of humans and their environment. In this struggle to appropriate the means, apply such a program, and move towards societal change, it’s the organized working class that can play the leading role if it fights side by side with the climate movement, the feminist movement and other social movements in a united front. This would lay the foundations for the overthrow of the capitalist system.
