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- Forwarded message -
From: Richard Greeman
Date: Thu, Dec 5, 2019 at 9:54 AM
Subject: French General Strike
*French Unions and Yellow Vests Converge;*
*Launch General Strike for Dec. 5 *
by Richard Greeman
(Montpellier, France) On the eve of an “unlimited” (open-ended) General
Strike called for Dec. 5, more and more unions and protest groups are
pledging to join in.
Two things are unusual about this strike. The first is that it is
open-ended, rather than the usual one-day ritualistic protest marches, and
it may be prolonged from day to day by workers’ assemblies as long as
necessary. The second is that the Yellow Vests, the self-organized,
horizontal, social movement that sprung up spontaneously just over a year
ago and is still popular despite severe repression, have decided to
converge with the strike.
Just as surprising, Philippe Martinez Secretary General of CGT, France’s
largest union federation, who had originally spurned the Yellow Vests,
immediately welcomed them, making for a heady mix. For the union leaders,
who try to control their followers tightly, the Yellow Vests are like a
loose canon on the deck of a ship. Who knows what may result?
The nation-wide strike was originally proposed by the CGT’s Martinez, in
response to the Macron Governments’ proposed neoliberal “reform” of the
France retirement system. Macron’s reform would essentially gut France’s
solidarity-based retirement system. Even more than U.S. Social Security,
which even Trump and the Republicans don’t dare touch, retirement over here
is a sacred cow. It was established at the end of WWII when the Resistance
and the Communists were influential and the business class was in bad odor,
having collaborated with the Nazis. Under Macron’s proposed new ‘point’
system, many will lose up to 30% according to estimates, and future
governments could arbitrarily decide how much money each point is worth!
*The Camel’s Back*
This latest, and most sweeping of Macron’s two years’ string of neo-liberal
attacks on social welfare may prove to be the straw that breaks the camel’s
back; and camels are dangerously irascible animals known to bite or kick
their masters to death when mistreated.
The French were already in an angry mood in the Spring of 2018 when Macron
started pushing through his reforms, but they were disappointed when the
CGT and other union leaders imposed only stop-and-go, limited, local
strikes and failed utterly to counter-attack. It was on the grave of those
defeats that the spontaneous Yellow Vest movements sprung up like mushrooms
all over France last November, supported by over 70% of the French.
Although justifiably suspicious of unions, especially of the union leaders,
the Yellow Vests, after suffering a year of police brutality and prejudiced
media coverage, came around to the need for convergence. Thus, at our
fourth national Assembly of Assemblies on Nov. 3, we voted to join and “be
at the heart” of the Dec. 5 movement in the hope that “a defeat for the
government would open the road to other victories for our camp.”
Will the union leaders like Martinez stay the course? If they try to settle
with Macron piecemeal and divide the movement as they have in the past,
will the workers’ assemblies be able to stop them? Will the strike over
retirement benefits develop along broad social revolutionary lines like
similar horizontal movements in South America, the Middle East and
elsewhere? Will these international movements finally connect, as the
Yellow Vests’ Assembly of Assembly proposed when it dedicated our first
anniversary to social movements around the world?
The following leaflet, developed by the Yellow Vests of Uzès and
Montpellier, expresses the hopes and fears of the Yellow Vests on the eve
of this open-ended struggle:
* “One for all and all for one !”*
For the past two years, a government of the rich has been imposing
« reforms » designed to deprive the French people of all the advantages won
by several generations of workers. For the past two years, Macron,
“President of the rich,” following the rules laid down by the European
Union of bankers and in defiance of the people, has been using police-state
methods to increase the inequality of an already unequal society for the
benefit of his Stock Market cronies through tax advantages and
privatizations.
Today, by attacking their retirements, this would-be Jupiter has succeeded
in uniting the French people – against him ! United, we have the power to
make him withdraw his so called « reform » of our pensions. That’s obvious.
But we must not
