Last week, voice.wales reported from Paris as mass strikes & protests against Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms continued.
Amidst the unrest, Axel Persson, leading member of the CGT trade union, sat down with Mark Redfern to discuss the ongoing situation and what is driving the revolt. His full interview will be released as a podcast this week.
On Tuesday, another nationwide day of action has been called, forcing King Charles’ Paris visit to be cancelled.
By Mark Redfern. Cover image, protests in Paris, Mark Redfern
A striking French train driver and activist with the CGT trade union has told voice.wales that the movement sweeping the country has the power to defeat Macron’s pension reforms and instil fear into the French ruling class.
Axel Persson, the General Secretary of the Trappes CGT train workers branch, to the south west of Paris, said that the huge anger amongst French workers went far beyond the single issue of the retirement age.
“The situation is like all across Europe – inflation is up, the wages are not following suit and this pension issue is really the pinnacle of all the attacks they are pushing through,” he said.
Speaking the night before a nationwide strike and protest on Thursday, which saw over a million take to the streets, Persson said workers’ grievances had been building for some time.
“And now on top of that, the only prospect we had of being liberated from work is being pushed further away from us,” he said in reference to Macron’s attempts to raise the pension age from 62 to 64.
But even though the law was passed less than two weeks ago, Persson said there was still hope in seeing it reversed. “We have to make the country as ungovernable as possible, and basically instil enough fear in the employers,” he told voice.wales.
One of the factors driving the revolt – which has seen millions strike and protest across France in recent months – is the sight of enormous profits being recorded by big business.
“And what really pisses people off is that they’re saying that the pension system is gonna have a deficit within ten years.”
“They say within ten years it’s gonna be between ten and twenty billion euros in deficit each year. But literally that amount is less than the amount of the profits that are made annually, sometimes by single corporations.”
He cited an example of a French shipping company, which is not considered to be one the bigger firms in the country, posting annual profits of 36 billion Euros.
“So I mean a single company like that can not only pay the entire deficit of the entire pension system, it can still have billions of profits left for themselves.”
“So people say there is money, you’re basically just emptying our pickets to fill yours. So people are saying, ‘ok we are being robbed, we have to defend ourselves.’”
“And that’s the same that’s being applied to all sectors,” he added, “people are saying ‘so you’re saying there’s no money left but there’s loads of money, but you want to keep it for the shareholders, the corporations, the banks’ and people see that.”
This will sound all too familiar to workers in Britain who are facing similar attacks on their pay and working conditions whilst corporate profits soar, sparking a strike wave of their own.
But Persson said that another key factor at play in the unrest in France was the anti-democratic nature of Macron’s approach, a position he was forced into by pressure from below.
The scale of the anger at his reforms has led even the traditional right in France, who would normally support the plans, to back away from them.
“Even the right wing parties are feeling the tension in the country and said ‘oh no we’re not gonna vote for that issue,’” Persson said.
This led to Macron having a last minute change of heart when it came to getting his reforms through the French parliament.
Unable to rely on the right’s vote, the French President enacted the constitutional rule 49.3 at the last minute, meaning it was forced through by decree.
“So now people are saying, ‘you don’t have a majority of parliament, in public opinion, among workers, not even in your own institutions and you are pushing it through against the will of everybody,’” said Persson.
The following weekend, riots took off in several cities. On the streets of Paris on Thursday, where 800,000 marched, and elsewhere in France, people held aloft signs in anger at Macron’s authoritarian move.
But Persson said that the reason Macron had gone ahead was because he was fulfilling a mandate given to him by big business, and it was the bosses who the movement was now up against.
“In the end, if we win this strike, it’s not gonna be Macron who caves in, it’s gonna be the employers who call him and say ‘ok the situation is getting out of hand.’”
“We’re gonna have to manage to convince people that despite the fact that parliament are considered to have adopted it. Like we have done before, we’re gonna have to continue the strike until we force them to withdraw it…we have to make the country as ungovernable as possible and basically instil enough fear in the employers [to reverse it].”
There is precedent for this happening in France, with a previous pensions bill being defeated and an attack on labour rights under the government of Jacques Chirac also defeated after civil unrest.
More nationwide strikes and protests have been called for Tuesday, but Persson says it is unclear what will happen next.
“We can’t be sure of it because there’s only one thing I’m sure of now – that social movements are unpredictable,” he said.
“We will do everything in our power to make sure they go as far as possible, sometimes they succeed, sometimes not. This is not gonna calm down any time soon, but what I’m certain of is that this anger cannot be contained indefinitely.”
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