France

Lutte Ouvrière fête 2023

Eleven activists and friends of Workers’ Liberty made the journey to the annual fête organised by the French revolutionary socialist organisation Lutte Ouvrière in parkland near Paris on 27-29 May. This year, good weather made the attendance higher than the usual 20,000 or so. Many come to enjoy the food stalls, children’s games, film showings, and talks on everything from pre-history or life in the Middle Ages through to many scientific topics, and there are also many political debates and talks in areas set aside for “forums”. Workers’ Liberty ran a forum (well-attended given its 9am Sunday...

French strikes continue despite 49.3

On 6 April French workers staged another major day of strikes and protests against President Macron’s reform to increase the pension age in France. A further day of strikes is planned for 13 April. The 6 April action was called by union leaderships (the “Intersyndicale” committee of the general secretaries of eight confederations) after talks with Macron’s prime minister Élisabeth Borne broke down after just an hour. Numbers on last week’s protest were down according to the CGT, with 400,000 reported demonstrating in Paris, down from 450,000 a week earlier. But the strikes are continuing to...

France: power in the streets

The use of 49-3 [the government pushing through pension changes over the heads of parliament] didn’t have the effect that the government had hoped for: that people would see it as a defeat and as an end.

French workers show how to fight

In 1995 the French working class defeated pension changes proposed by a right-wing government with a strong majority and a newly-elected right-wing president behind it. It was a wave of strikes greater than the French general strike of 1936, and excelled only by the bigger general strike of 1968. The victory led to some years of renewed buoyancy for the revolutionary socialist left in France. France’s pension schemes are not as generous as they seem at first sight, but they are better than Britain’s. They are set in law. The ruling class still wants to change the law to cheapen the cost. The...

Strikes multiply against pension changes

After a period of relative calm, French workers have renewed their fight against President Macron’s pension reforms at a higher level. Since January this year, French workers have been staging a series of major strikes and protests against pensions reforms being brought by President Macron and his Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne. These changes would raise the minimum retirement age for most workers from 62 to 64 and increase the amount of time someone has to work in order to qualify for a pension. The protests began on 19 January with a day of strikes and demonstrations which brought over a...

French unions call for ongoing strikes after 7 March

The Solidaires trade union confederation and sectors of the larger CGT confederation (France has eight “TUC”s) are calling for ongoing strikes after 7 March, the next-but-one day of action on pensions. The appeal is for “renewable” strikes, where strikers at a workplace meet each day to decide whether and how to continue. In 1995, a great wave of such strikes, by some measures even more widespread than the 1968 mass strike, stopped pension cuts proposed by the right-wing government of the time. President Macron is intent on raising the minimum age to get a full pension from 62 to 64 by 2030...

Huge strike in France on pensions

On 19 January, France’s trade unions reported over two million demonstrators — people demonstrating, not just striking — across the country against President Macron’s plan to change the standard pension age from 62 to 64. Even the police put the figure at 1.12 million. The turnout was bigger than on 5 December 2019, at the start of the previous big movement against cutting pension rights, and comparable to the bigger movement in 1995. In France strikes are rarely 100%, but this time the strike (called jointly by all the sizeable union confederations) was 100% at the Total oil refineries, more...

The "minimum service" law in France

As a wave of strikes sweep France, beginning with oil and petrol refinery workers but spreading into other industries like transport, the French state has started to use some of its legal weaponry against striking workers. The most dramatic tool that the French state can deploy against strikers is “requisitioning”. Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne instructed prefects (regional chiefs of civil service and police) to start using this power to order strikers back to work. The law allows this power to be used in emergencies where there is a threat to “good order, health, peace and public safety”...

A harmful split in the French far left

Over the weekend of 9-11 December 2022 the French New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) held its national conference. By the end of this conference, there were two NPAs. In short, the leadership (including past Presidential candidates Philippe Poutou and Olivier Besancenot) attempted to split the NPA by walking out of the conference and announcing its intention to expel all minority groupings. We in Workers’ Liberty think that this split is bad and unnecessary. We note that the leadership faction was able to win a majority of votes for its people in internal elections, but could not command a...

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