The Government Continues Its Attacks While the Trade Unions Isolate and Sabotage the Struggles

(«Proletarian»; Nr. 21; Spring-Summer 2024)

Back Sumary

 

 

The government finally backed away from an amendment to the law on the financing of social security, which was intended to increase the retirement age. On the advice of its allies from the centre-right party Mouvement démocrate (MoDem for short), it concluded that through sham “negotiations with the social partners” (employers’ organisations and collaborationist trade unions – including the CGT trade union confederation) it would be easier to push the reform of the welfare system through. This step was not a setback, as the government assured that a bill along these lines would be presented shortly. On 27 September, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire called on employers to “enthusiastically” support this “vital for the country” reform. According to figures published by the official services, raising the retirement age to 64 would bring in additional revenue of €15 billion by the end of the five-year period (thanks to an increase in the number of taxpayers) and would save around €7–8 billion in the pension system (Le Maire also said). It is also claimed that a significant number of new jobs would be created by this reform, whereas in reality the desired result will be that many older working proletarians will, in fact, be forced to retire before the statutory retirement age, hence with a reduced pension.

Although the government claims that this reform is necessary to “preserve our pension system”, it is in reality necessary to preserve capitalism’s average rate of profit: in France, as in other capitalist countries, the keynote is an aggressive campaign against “unproductive spending”, i.e. spending on “social welfare”, of which old-age pensions account for the largest part, about 14% of “gross domestic product” (GDP) in France, according to the latest figures. But what is particularly unacceptable to French capitalists is that this social welfare expenditure is generally lower in other European countries (36% of GDP, compared with 30.3% in Germany and 30% on average in the European Union in 2020) (1): in a situation of intensified competition, where market shares are being lost, such expenditure is an obstacle. The bourgeois governments, be they left-wing or right-wing, were therefore instructed to reduce the “social levies” on companies by cutting precisely this expenditure, be it pensions, health care costs, unemployment benefits, etc., and have not backed down; the Macron government is merely following this movement, only accentuating it because of the crisis. This “social expenditure” represents “deferred” or “indirect” wage, i.e. the part of the wage that the boss does not pay directly to the worker but is paid to him in the form of various social benefits (2). The reduction in social levies, and hence in social benefits, is therefore an attack on wages: it is a directly anti-proletarian measure aimed at increasing capitalist profits.

 

TRADE UNIONS AND LEFT-WING PARTIES RESPOND TO THE ATTACKS WITH FAKE STRUGGLES

 

The unions’ leadership responded to the erosion of “purchasing power” and the threat to pensions with their old practice of repeated “days of action”: on 22 September for the health sector, an inter-professional day of action on 29 September, then on 18 October, 10 November, while the left parties organised a demonstration in Paris on 16 October (“march against the high cost of living”, etc.). Clearly, this flurry of initiatives has not weakened the government’s resolve. How could it be otherwise? The government knows from experience that it does not have to fear these “social partners” because they have once again shown that they are in control of the situation; even the day of action of 18 October, which the media presented with pomp as a terrible general strike, while the strike in the refineries continued, did not have much impact because the unions did the minimum to mobilise the workers (3). Despite the strong speeches, the strike at the refineries remained isolated and the CGT was instrumental in ensuring that the requisitions were carried out peacefully and the refineries resumed operations one by one. Other days had even less of an echo. This does not imply that discontent is not widespread or that proletarians are resigned: the success of the movement in the RATP, the Paris transport company, proves otherwise. But they are rightly sceptical about the usefulness of these repeated “days of action”.

Confronted with this attitude, some groups on the “far” left try to radicalize their public speeches slightly; the Trotskyist Lutte Ouvrière thus calls for a “plan of struggle” “to ensure that wages keep up with prices” (sic) (4), taking up the popular line of reasoning of another Trotskyist organisation, Révolution Permanente ( RP, Permanent Revolution which was born as a current within the Trotskyist New Anticapitalist Party which it left in 2021), which sees the way out for workers in drawing up a “plan of battle” (sic). As far as the unions are concerned, however, we find that these lofty-sounding formulations are mere show: to adopt such plans, these collaborationist organisations would first have to actually want to fight! But as supporters of class collaboration, they foremost want to negotiate, not to fight.

The way forward is to be found in the event mentioned on the website of the RP (5); it is the way of the workers of Daher (Toulouse), who, in the face of the inaction of the unions, have organised themselves at the grassroots level to strike: it is the way of independent class organisation and struggle, which breaks with class collaboration and all those who promote it.

This is the only solution for the immediate defence of proletarian interests!

 

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(1) See FIPECO, June 3, 2022.

(2) In corporate accounting, social levies are included in payroll expense.

(3) In Marseilles, for example, the CGT was even absent from the demonstration to which it had called the workers!

(4) See Lutte Ouvrière, 27.10.22. https://www.revolutionpermanente.fr/Toulouse-200-grevistes-a-Daher-suite-a-un-appel-a-la-mobilisation-des-salaries-a-la-base

 

(Le Prolétaire n° 546, september-october-november 2022)