BY NAT LONDON
PARIS - "Withdraw the Juppé Plan!" and "All together, all together, yes!" have become the rallying cries of millions of workers and students in revolt throughout France. Increasingly, workers are also raising the demand that Prime Minister Alain Juppé resign.
On December 12, more than 2 million demonstrated in cities across the country. Some 200,000 marched in Paris, according to the organizers of the action.
According to the police estimates, demonstrations in both Marseilles and Toulouse exceeded 100,000 - making them the largest actions in these cities since 1944, when Hitler's occupying army withdrew.
The mobilizations were led by large, spirited contingents of striking rail workers. They reflected a highly combative mood, as workers sensed the government weakening and beginning to make its first concessions. At the end of the day, the unions called for another national day of action and demonstrations to be held December 16.
Millions of unionists struck, particularly in the public sector. Workers on the railroads, buses and subways, gas and electric utilities, telecommunications, postal service, air traffic control, many ports, the national education system, hospitals, garbage collection, and the daily newspapers and public radio stations are among those who stopped work for the day or are now on unlimited strike action. University students have also become an integral part of the strike movement.
The mass demonstrations on December 12 culminated a week of rapid extension of the strike movement, started by railroad workers 19 days earlier.
When Juppé addressed the nation on December 5, refusing to compromise with the striking rail workers, he hoped Élysée Palace would rally public opinion against the strike. But the protest movement mushroomed into a social confrontation between millions of workers and students on one side and the bosses and their government on the other.
The day of Juppé's speech, 700,000 demonstrated throughout France, followed by more than a million on December 7. Two million workers were on strike that day.
First concessions by Juppé
By the end of that week it became clear that Juppé had
failed in his efforts to stonewall the spreading movement
into submission. He was forced to address the country once
again, offering concessions to the strikers for the first
time.
The prime minister agreed to cancel his attempt to end early retirement for rail workers but stood by his plan to gut the social security system. Workers were only emboldened, as the December 12 actions showed.
Juppé claims that the rail workers are really interested in defending their personal "privileges," such as early retirement benefits.
Many rail workers at the sprawling Villeneuve-St. George rail shunt yards took this allegation head-on at their daily strike assembly. "We started the strike with three demands - against the restructuring of the national rail system, for our wages and retirement benefits, and for the withdrawal of Juppé's plan attacking the social security system. Are we going to settle just on our own demands?" asked Patrick.
For Serge Lachaise of the French Confederation of Democratic Labor (CFDT) and Franck Lacomb of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), who jointly chaired the assembly, there could be no question of abandoning the demand for the withdrawal of Juppé's entire plan. "The heart of our movement has to be Juppé's plan. This is what unites us to workers everywhere in France," Lachaise told the meeting.
The discussion then turned to how to build a delegation to go to the Renault auto plant at Choisy-le-roi just across the rail yards. Nearly 100 rail workers showed up at the Renault plant gates the next morning to explain their strike and talk to the auto workers.
Striking workers at the Austerlitz station in Paris agreed that Juppé's plan had to be withdrawn. For Dominique, the current strike differs from the last rail strike in 1986. "Last time we were `corporatist' - that is we only raised demands of interest to rail workers. This time we are fighting for everyone." Dominique had just come back from a demonstration of rail workers from the Austerlitz station along with activists from the Right to Housing (DAL), an association that provides shelter for homeless people.
The Austerlitz workers voted unanimously to continue their strike until Juppé's plan is withdrawn, although they had already beaten back the attacks on their retirement benefits. Several workers said, "Juppé should withdraw along with his plan."
For one striking train driver at the Gare du Nord station, the reasons for escalating the struggle went deeper. "This society sucks. That's why there's the struggle," he said. Two days earlier a homeless person had been found dead from the cold in the rail yard, just a hundred yards from the picket line.
Rail workers set tone
Combative rail contingents set the tone of the December
12 demonstrations. It took three-quarters of an hour for
the thousands of rail workers carrying flares and blowing
horns, normally used to warn approaching trains, to enter
Nation Square in Paris. They were followed by several
thousand bus and metro workers.
There were contingents from housing rights associations. Members of the coalition that organized a November 25 march of tens of thousands defending abortion rights were also present.
Two Militant reporters who are rail workers in Los Angeles wore signs identifying themselves: "Chemoinots des USA - Solidarité" (Rail workers from the USA - Solidarity). They were stopped everywhere and photographed numerous times.
Juppé's plan is a direct assault on the social security system of medical care, retirement, unemployment, and family benefits. The government wants to slash social security benefits and raise taxes, allegedly to balance the budget "within two years." Juppé has also moved to break up and partially privatize railroads, gas and electric utilities, the post office, and telecommunications.
He announced that the retirement age for public workers would be raised to the level of those in the private sector, where, since 1993, workers retire at age 60 and must work 40 years to get full pensions instead of the 37.5 years previously necessary. Most employees at the state-run SNCF railroad retire at age 55. Train drivers retire at age 50.
Paris is attempting to push through these measures to keep the franc strong and restore the competitive position of French capitalism against rivals in London and Bonn.
Even after the December 12 actions, Juppé stood by his "reforms," claiming there is "no better alternative." He has invoked an article of the French constitution that allows the prime minister to declare some laws without approval of parliament. This allows the government to rule by decree on all questions concerning the social security system.
But millions of workers and students are not willing to take "no" for an answer to their demands, making it likely that the class struggle will continue to heat up.
Élysée can't cash in on hardships
The shutdown of all public transportation has brought
about huge traffic tie-ups around Paris. On some days,
traffic jams are as long as 580 kilometers around the city.
It takes this reporter as long as four hours to drive the
20-kilometer (13-mile) stretch of highway from the Paris
suburb of Marne-la-Vallée to the city.
The government has tried to play on the very real difficulties many people are facing. Many workers spend four or more hours a day going back and forth to work. Families are separated as some employers in Paris house their employees in city hotels for the week.
The governing Rally for the Republic (RPR) sent a secret circular to all its local branches to prepare for what it hoped would be a massive national demonstration December 7 to protest the transportation strike. Each RPR unit was to set up a "Committee of Users of Public Transportation." According to the circular, these committees were to use post office box numbers for their address and could have no public association with the RPR. The "secret" document, however, was published by several national newspapers.
A test demonstration was held in Paris December 3, but only about 1,000 people attended. As the strike movement expanded, the RPR was forced to cancel the December 7 action. That day turned into a national day of protest by the striking unions. Instead of a massive protest of outraged public service users, one million workers demonstrated against the government and millions struck.
A final effort to organize an antistrike demonstration fizzled on December 10. Only 1,500 people showed up.
Despite the transportation problems, polls showed 59 percent of the population supporting the strike on its 15th day. This has made it very difficult for the Juppé government to act against the strike. Proposals by the General Confederation of Small and Medium Businesses to use the army to solve the transportation problem had to be shelved.
Some small businessmen have been volunteering to staff clandestine mail sorting centers set up by the postal service in an effort to break the strike there. But striking postal workers have sent out roving pickets to find and shut down the strikebreaking centers.
Striking workers have replied by re-enforcing their ties to various social movements. In Limoges, striking rail workers seized several passenger rail cars, turned on the heat, and began housing homeless people. They also took up a collection to contribute to a fund for victims of AIDS. Striking electrical workers have been switching the central distribution centers onto nighttime service, thus reducing everyone's electrical bills by 50 percent.
Common actions are being held by striking workers and the Right to Housing group. DAL, working with striking students at Jussieu University and rail workers from a nearby station, occupied a university building to house homeless. Later, they occupied the Pompidou Cultural Center.
Another example of human solidarity developed during the strike wave has been the "hitchhiking phenomenon." Drivers will ask pedestrians in the street if they need a ride.
On December 6 and 7 coal miners in Lorraine region fought pitched battles with the CRS riot police. The conflict started with a strike for wages at four mines. Coal miners marched to the regional prefecture where they were met by CRS forces. The local president of the CFDT miners union took the microphone to urge the strikers to remain calm in the face of police provocations. As he spoke he was seriously injured by a tear gas grenade fired straight into his face. Thousands of miners returned to their mines for additional equipment.
The workers cleared out the CRS cops with a bulldozer, which they then sent crashing into the wall of the police commissariat. Fifty miners shut down one of the generators in the nearby power plant.
Some 100 miners went to the town hall and forced mayor Pierre Lang, who is also a conservative deputy in the National Assembly, to go with them to the bottom of the mine shaft at the Vouthers mine. The mayor was held there for two hours and was released when he agreed to accompany the miners to a meeting with the prefect and the director of the state-run coal operation.
On the second day of the conflict, 4,000 miners fought against 700 riot police for most of the day. More than 50 people were injured in the pitched battles, two of them seriously. At the urging of union officials, the miners returned to work December 11 with a modest wage gain.
Nat London is a member of the CGT at the Renault plant at Choisy-le-roi.