As personal cost of action mounts, unions may find concessions hard to resist in return for new work ethic and pension deal
Angelique Chrisafis in Paris The Guardian Saturday November 24, 2007
In the 5am darkness outside a bus depot in southern Paris the diehard 20-man picket-line stood warming their hands by a makeshift fire, contemplating the future of France. "We're the human stones ready to be lobbed at the government. We're the last line of resistance to protect France from neo-liberalism, capitalism and the end of society," said Herve Berthomé, a bus driver, whose father used to reminisce about striking in May 1968.
Berthomé, 43, would normally be driving the 84 bus from the Pantheon through Paris's Left Bank, humming his favourite Genesis songs to himself. But instead he and a handful of fellow drivers - the grassroots of the powerful, communist-linked CGT union - were holding their ground in a transport strike that has gridlocked France and proved the defining moment of Nicolas Sarkozy's promised new era. By the eighth morning of the strike this week Berthomé had already forfeited €800 (£570) in docked wages. Some of the strikers with families and children were beginning to feel the strain. "Our wages are so low anyway that we can only shop in discount stores - if we have to live off noodles to continue the strike, so be it," said one father of two. After more than a decade driving buses Berthomé earns around €1,800 a month and is currently able to retire at 54. Sarkozy wants to reform the special pensions deals that allow train and bus drivers - and certain other workers including Paris opera stagehands - to stop work earlier than other state employees on favourable terms.
But to Berthomé and his comrades the pension fight was round one in a bigger battle. He was inspired by Britain's miners' strike, Ken Loach's film on the horrors of privatised British railways, The Full Monty and Michael Moore's documentary Sicko, which contrasts the nightmares of America's healthcare system with the benefits of France's ever present state. Berthomé feared France's social system was going to be dismantled, and pensions were only the start.
"Sarkozy is our Thatcher," he said. "He's a provocateur, he plays one France against the other. He's ready to serve his class and his cronies, the rich who eat caviar off a golden spoon."
The strikers gave a prolonged honk of an antique bus klaxon, but there was little danger of waking up the neighbours. For the past week millions of French people have been waking at 4am and resorting to increasingly desperate methods of transport, from roller skates to quad bikes, children's scooters to hitch-hiking, to try to get to work despite their crippled buses and trains.
Morning rush hour would often see 300-mile tailbacks across France as people took to their cars. Police had to force back commuters from overcrowded Paris train platforms. A surge in bike and scooter accidents hit those braving the roads. Others slept at work.
When Sarkozy promised a new work ethic as the president "of the France that gets up early", people rising before dawn due to strike chaos was not the image he had in mind.
Outside France commentators deemed this "black November" Sarkozy's Thatcher moment - a chance for the new, modernising president to break France's forces for social and economic immobilism. France has often been said to be impossible to modernise, never ready for reform but always ready for a revolution. Before his election Sarkozy promised to "liquidate the legacy" of the May 1968 protests.
The recent days of strikes cost France around €400m a day. Industry faced a shortage of materials as freight trains stopped, hotels and restaurants lost businesses, boutiques said their 50% drop in trade had not been seen since the May 1968 protests.
On Tuesday civil servants staged their own separate 24-hour strike over pay and conditions and students blockaded faculties over university funding reforms. The transport strike limped on for nine days with some Paris lines still disrupted yesterday. A hard core of students continue to resist, with the Sorbonne closed until Monday after violent clashes yesterday when some students tried to blockade it.
But both the right and left his week said parallels with Thatcher were inexact. Sarkozy has been cautious, quietly offering concessions that unions will find hard to resist - the SNCF railway management has proposed a €90m a year financial package to compensate staff for the extra two and a half years they will be required to work.
Work ethic
Negotiations will last a month. Rail and bus workers threaten to resume their strike the week before Christmas, when it could cause huge disruption. "Frankly I think it went a lot better here in France than with Thatcher," said Sarkozy's aide, Patrick Devedjian. Sarkozy averted a battle to the death over pensions knowing that his worst headaches and hardest reforms are yet to come - in health, the labour code and general pensions.
Sarkozy wants to fight his battles one by one. France has sluggish economic growth, a huge budget and social security deficit and massive debt that is worrying the EU. At the top of Sarkozy's long list of changes for France is installing a new work ethic where the French work more and for longer. Currently France works on average 617 hours a person a year, compared with 800 hours in Britain. To the government, reforming the special early pensions perks of 500,000 public sector workers was a logical place to start. It was also symbolic: in 1995 three weeks of crippling transport strikes brought France to its knees and forced Jacques Chirac to cave in on the same reform.
"Sarkozy has no choice whatsoever but to get what he wants this time. If he can't succeed with this reform he won't be able to do the rest," said Bruno Carré, economist at Paris's Institute of International and Strategic Relations. "And he sees a majority of French people behind him in the polls. When you squeezed onto the few metros and buses, people were not complaining about Sarkozy, they're complaining about the strikers."
Despite the mythology surrounding French unions in reality they are weak and divided. Trade union membership in France is among the lowest in the West. At 8% of the public sector and 5% of the private sector, membership is far behind the UK and even the US. There are more unemployed people in France than trade union members. In an average year the French miss proportionately fewer working days from strikes than Americans do. The transport strike has flagged up the weaknesses of unions as hardline grassroots continued their strike even as negotiations began.
But where France excels is in its age-old tradition of street protests. Protesting students this week said they still saw the popular "street demo" as a counterpoint to France's weak parliament. Civil servants, including teachers and nurses, staging their own 24-hour strike on Tuesday marched for better pay. They were joined by students and the transport workers. Political pollsters warned that the biggest danger to the government was that the different fronts joined up.
The public sector workers were protesting at their low salaries. "We're not privileged at all," said Jean Christophe Anglade, who teaches French in a tough lycee in a poor Paris suburb. "In terms of low salaries, the state is the worst employer in France." After 20 years' teaching a primary school teacher in France can earn the same as a teacher's starter salary in Britain. Christine Huet, a highly specialised hospital theatre nurse on strike this week, earns €2,200 a month, less than her husband who drives buses.
State workers' main worry is also the number one concern of the French population: the cost of living is rising and low salaries make it impossible to make ends meet. French "purchasing power" - lower than in the UK or Ireland - is an explosive issue.
But Sarkozy does not plan to back down on the civil servants' other complaint: his plans to streamline France's bloated state sector and public administration, the biggest and costliest in Europe. Next year one in three public sector workers who retire will not be replaced. At least 11,000 education jobs will go. Civil servants this week said they would be prepared to strike again.
When Mr Sarkozy leaves on a China trip today he will be quietly hopeful that by Christmas his first pension reforms are likely to be achieved, opening the way for his tougher social reforms next year.
Dominique Moïsi, a founder of the French Institute of International Relations, said: "A historian of France in the 21st century might judge that the cost to France of these 10 days has been excessive," he said, adding that the diehard strikers and student protesters resembled a "hard left that hasn't changed since the middle ages, or the peasants' revolt".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,,2216336,00.html
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