France: Unions, Left Confront Macrons Attacks on Rail Services and Jobs
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- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1577 ... March 29, 2018
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France: Unions, Left Confront Macron’s Attacks on Rail Services and Jobs
Dick Nichols
France is once again on the brink of an all-out industrial war -- and its outcome could transform the country’s political landscape. The showdown is over the plans that President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Edouard Philippe have for the state-owned National Railway Company (SNCF), which have been described by Le Monde as "the biggest change for the SNCF since its founding in 1937."
The stakes in the fight are huge: France’s 150,000 rail workers could suffer a defeat like that of Britain’s miners under Margaret Thatcher. On the other hand, Philippe could suffer the same fate as former PM Alain Juppe, whose 1995 economic "reform" was trashed by a vast... wave of industrial action and popular revolt.
As an initial response, rail worker unions led a Paris demonstration on March 22 in defence of public services that also involved workers from Air France, air traffic control centres, Paris regional public transport, public hospitals and retirement homes and other services. The demonstration was one of 150 across the country. The country’s four rail unions have also announced that they will launch 36 days of strikes over a three-month period beginning on April 3, alternating 48-hour stoppages with 72 hours of normal work.
Previously, in an extremely rare display of unity, 13 left organizations issued a joint statement calling for participation in the demonstration. The call was initiated by former New Anti-Capitalist Party presidential candidate Olivier Besancenot, taken up by Communist Party of France general secretary Pierre Laurent and eventually supported by the other main forces of the left, France Unbowed and the Socialist Party (PS), as well as by the Greens and smaller left forces.
The March 22 mobilization attracted 400,000 across the whole of France, with 65,000 in Paris, 55,000 in Marseilles, 35,000 in La Rochelle, 20,000 in Toulouse and 15,000 in Lyon. Forty per cent of high-speed trains and 50 per cent of regional services were cancelled on the day.
