'3 million' on the streets in France

kennel_district

Active member
from www.libcom.org/blog

'Bernard Thibault of the CGT (French Communist Trade Union) believes there are 3 million marching across France. “We are more than 3 million today in the streets, it is historical, it is unthinkable that the Prime Minister should continue to hold his position. For us, there is only one exit, it is the withdrawal of this reform”'

What do people think? I'm impressed that people will stand up against the system of domination, and I don't think that liberalisation of labour laws is the cure-all for an economy (I certainly think workers' don't have enough protection in the UK labour market).

However, how do you deal with high unemployment and endemic racism in French society?
 

ambrose

Well-known member
what ive neevr seen explained about this from e.g. the economist, is why this particular legislation is necessary to liberalise labour laws. the legislation is proposed to allow employers to sack employees under a certain age without justification - have i got that right?

this seems a little drastic and unnecessary. surely there are more fruitful and acceptable changes that could have been made to labour laws to produce a similar effect. How acceptable does a publication like the Economist think such a proposal would be in a country like Britain which has relatively lax labour laws?
 

kennel_district

Active member
ambrose said:
what ive neevr seen explained about this from e.g. the economist, is why this particular legislation is necessary to liberalise labour laws. the legislation is proposed to allow employers to sack employees under a certain age without justification - have i got that right?
the legislation introduces the CPE - a new type of contract that will be introduced for workers under the age of 26 - that they can be sacked with only 2 weeks to a month's pay statutory minimum compensation in the first 2 years of their contract. I think that's more than we get in Britain, and workers in the first two years of their contracts here have very little statutory legal protection.

The unions are particularly annoyed as it was rushed through the french parliament with no consultation with them.
 

matt b

Indexing all opinion
kennel_district said:
. I think that's more than we get in Britain, and workers in the first two years of their contracts here have very little statutory legal protection.

in the UK i'd guess that many people under 26 are on temporary contracts which offer vrtually no employment protection, so no law like the CPE is needed in the UK.

this protest is in sharp contrast to the gvt workers strike in the UK today- no support from other workers or users of the services they provide (today, when i suggested to a couple of groups of my students that they organise a collection for those losing a day's pay, i got laughed at)
 

kennel_district

Active member
matt b said:
(today, when i suggested to a couple of groups of my students that they organise a collection for those losing a day's pay, i got laughed at)

that's the most depressing thing I've heard today
 

milkandhoney

Well-known member
ambrose said:
what ive neevr seen explained about this from e.g. the economist, is why this particular legislation is necessary to liberalise labour laws. the legislation is proposed to allow employers to sack employees under a certain age without justification - have i got that right?

this seems a little drastic and unnecessary. surely there are more fruitful and acceptable changes that could have been made to labour laws to produce a similar effect. How acceptable does a publication like the Economist think such a proposal would be in a country like Britain which has relatively lax labour laws?

i think the argument is that companies would be less reluctant to employ younger adults if they knew they could strike them off easily if they turned out to be bad employees, so it would improve france's problems with youth unemployment
 

owen

Well-known member
just been swearing at news 24 for two hours...the bbc as craven as ever. one of their correspondents in the place de la republique, who had evidently just been teargassed, coughed and spluttered through some spiel about 'violent' protestors (while the live camera showed police spraying gas in the face of people sitting down...see, it isn't violence when perpetrated by the state)

another correspondent, commenting on images of protestors walking in front of the water cannon, says 'they're just here for the spectacle!' maybe he read debord as a student and missed the point somewhere
 
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Padraig

Banned
owen said:
just been swearing at news 24 for two hours...the bbc as craven as ever. one of their correspondents in the place de la republique, who had evidently just been teargassed, coughed and spluttered through some spiel about 'violent' protestors (while the live camera showed police spraying gas in the face of people sitting down...see, it isn't violence when perpetrated by the state)

another correspondent, commenting on images of protestors walking in front of the water cannon, says 'they're just here for the spectacle!' maybe he read debord as a student and missed the point somewhere

But, of course, its not just France, mainstream reportage on other mass demonstrations has predictably been either noticably mute or smugly dismissive: the biggest ever demonstration in Los Angeles' history occured last Saturday, when 2 million protested against the neo-cons' imminent legislation criminalising America's 12 million "undocumented aliens" and anyone who "assists" them, or indeed, Britain's just-witnessed pension-related protests, the largest since the 1920s ... all of course in response to Kapitalism's autonomous quest to render labour into arbitrary, virtual capital ...
 

qwerty south

no use for a witticism
was watching french tv. no riots on the news on one channel (though it was covering the protests.

sky news, bbc news 24 and cnn = live riots
 
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jenks

thread death
french = riots

simple news values, means we don't have to question media preconceptions.

another answer to the differences between here and there is that they have maintained a tradition of union membership. They can mobilise people in a way we can't. (thatcher's anti-union laws saw to that)

My profession (teaching) must be one of the few which is still heavily unionised but not because of any ethical position but because it's seen as an insurance policy - if a kid complains then you can call on the union - it's not about any sense of a radicalised/politicised workforce.

I am always amazed that there can be a union existing pretty much purely on the basis of promising not to strike - ATL - surely the threat of removing your labour is a central tenet of being part of a union?
 

nonseq

Well-known member
On the other hand the power of striking is not distributed equally among all workers. For example when the French truckers want to strike for some egoistic reason they block the main highways, heavily disrupting the entire country. Serious negotation power compared to many other employment groups, who are too small or powerless to disrupt anything (but do have to live with the massive problems caused by the truckers). Its not exactly fair or democratic, this French "system".
 

tatarsky

Well-known member
Whilst it's always good to see some insurrection, and i wish it would become more widespread, in the case of the current French riots I can't help but disagree with their particular beef. The point of the reform is to create a more dynamic labour market for youth. The result will be that companies become much more willing to hire young people, over their older counterparts. Hiring someone is always a risk, you never know if they're going to work out, so to have the ability to fire them is important. Also, young people tend to move around jobs a lot anyway, as nobody really knows what they want to do.

It seems a bit strange to complain about potentially being sacked, when you don't even have a job, or any prospect of getting a job.
 

corneilius

Well-known member
Rebellion - stay in bed!

The one law everyone seems to miss, a law that is not on any statute books anywhere, is this - all workers deserve an equal share in the profits/rewards of the business or enterprise they are working in, an equal share whether they are Executives or Janitors. Anything less than that is theft.

I propose a total sloth rebellion. Go out today and blow all your credit on loads of food and some fine booze. Stay in bed next monday, and enjoy yerself! No papers, no TV. Log on and drop out! And stay in on Tuesday. Nobody does a tap untill the phuckers get the message. ( Iknow it's not gonna happen, so don't come back with "that's never ....")

Good on the French Youth for showing a bit of bottle. And to all who are so blindly conditioned that you can't see that we are all being royally screwed - WAKEY FUCKIN' WAKEY!

I have done a few gigs in Universities in the last year and I was absolutely and utterly appalled at the levels of successful conditioning I saw there. Baaaaa baaaaaaaa baaaaaaaa!

There, that's me rant for the week!

Well, not quite - there's a few others, but I haven't been posting for a few weeks, been ranting elsewhere. In my opinion if you are gonna dissent ya might as well go for the whole hog and call it the way you see it!

Laters
 
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