by Ramin Mazaheri and crossposted with PressTV
(Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of the books ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’ and the upcoming ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism.’)
Due to a Western media blackout on the subject, many may be surprised to learn that France’s general strike has just begun its seventh consecutive week. It’s the longest labor movement in French history – and by half – but the Western Mainstream Media is ignoring France until this historic moment passes.
It seems about to pass soon.
French unions have done a woeful job leading the strike despite having everything going for them at the beginning.
The alleged superiority of the so-called “independent” union model – favored by the West but opposed by any country with a revolution after 1917 – is once again failing the nation, if maybe not their dues-paying members.
The general strike is wobbling, and by January 24th the pension bill will be formally presented to the government. It’s amazing rapacity, because presenting a bill amid such strikes is obviously rushing it into the safe arms of a system dominated by President Emmanuel Macron; it is also amazing duplicity, because Macron only released the pension scheme’s details just last week!
Wasting time has been Macron’s main tactic during the general strike, despite the fact that workers and households are increasingly desperate after having gone without work for six full weeks. To be accurate, then: “wasting time” is not his tactic, but “increasing desperation”.
A simple recipe for the Macron era is: increase desperation + trace amounts of democratic discussion + rubber bullets + total control over Parliament = Macron’s deification outside of France and his vilification inside France.
But the so-called “centrist” Macron and his deviousness are well known by now – what happened to unions and their great leadership? Many French unionists have had the gall to tell me that countries with modern revolutions “have no unions” – so show us how it’s done then, Mr. Know-it-all?!
If unions can’t win this one for the nation, can they ever in the Western model?
This was supposed to be an easy one.
Domestic polls have never shown public support below 60% for the strike – from the start until today – nor disapproval of less than 70% for Macron’s unprecedented pension scheme.
But this was a “general strike” that lacked both “general” and “strike”.
A general strike is something which union leaders never really wanted, I think. It was forced by three things, all of which were undermining the incredibly unjustified cultural faith France has in their Western union model: hospital strikes which had been going on for months (due to years of austerity cuts), wildcat train strikes that had sprouted (work-related accidents were increasing due to reduced working conditions, the result of years of austerity cuts) and the bravery and selflessness of the Yellow Vests.
Macron forced the issue with this radical pension scheme – this was to be his “Thatcher/Reagan moment”, and he wanted it that way. But unions didn’t even answer the first-round bell.
The “strike” turned out to be entirely placed on the backs of train conductors. The notable feature of this historic era is the 2-3 times longer work commutes for urban areas, as trains were shut down for weeks and over the Christmas holiday.
But where were the other labor sectors? The unions failed miserably by failing to call on them to join the “general” strike.
Unions only called six days of nationwide strikes and protests – if they really wanted to win they would have called that many in the first week alone. What this means is that most French have actually taken less than a week off for to strike against the pension replacement.
Instead of blocking the economy or, more importantly, blocking the functioning of society (no schools, no hospitals, no day care, no elder care, no anything as much as possible), unions decided only to block urban public commutes; small-town life in France has been barely touched by the general strike.
Their lack of mobilisation feeds into the worst stereotypes of French laziness, but it is laziness of the bosses: it’s as if union chiefs said, “Let the public transport workers handle it all – we’re going on Christmas vacation.”
And they did!
Macron was only too happy to postpone negotiations for more than two weeks over the holiday period; union leaders incredibly outdid him by not calling for a nationwide strike or protest for nearly three weeks. I couldn’t understand it – so then why call a transport strike over the Christmas holiday at all? Why fragment your own forces?
Transport workers continued to shoulder the load alone, but why did union leaders not encourage anyone to join to them? Just terrible leadership, strategy and organisation.
France’s labor chiefs are not new, but they acted new on the job
As could have been predicted from their history, the Macron administration’s corruption gave them a golden chance to kill the pension system: Two weeks into the strike (December 17) the architect of the entire pension reform had to resign his ministry post due to corruption allegations.
What else can you ask for?! What a gift! What a mistake from such an untested government!
A sustained, immediate, massive mobilisation over such incredibly important corruption would have been hugely effective right then: How can the fruits of a corrupt minister be wholesome?
But unions did nothing to take advantage: they all went on Christmas vacation – everyone but train conductors.
All this prolongation gave the Macron administration more time to cut sweetheart deals with key labor sectors: just after the Western new year airline pilots and cabin crews announced they had made a self-interested arrangement with the government and called off their planned strike.
Inaction from unions gave Macron time to “divide and conquer” the strike, like always in France’s Age of Austerity, when they should have known from the beginning that this would be exactly their tactic.
The government then engaged in duplicity to sow confusion and stall. In addition to the radical “universal” and “points-based” system, the government wanted to increase the retirement age by two years. But this was always a fake poison pill – it was something the government could easily withdraw in order to appear like they were negotiating in good faith: the radical pension system is a far, far more lucrative prize for France’s 1%. On January 11 they announced they would suspend the age hike.
Then they said the suspension was only temporary.
Then they didn’t clarify when the temporary suspension would start or finish.
As clear as mud, and we all keep inching toward the January 24th formal presentation of the bill, when negotiations will be finished.
This week the participation of train conductors in the strike fell to their lowest levels – metro services in Paris are now about 20% from normal levels, but anyone using the train is obviously going against the strike.
But after six full weeks people tell me they have foot problems from so many long walks to and from work. Striking is hard, and unions should know that and thus pushed with all their might from the beginning. Instead, they are trying to do so now.
Out of increasing desperation, unions called for three days of national strikes this week, but attendance has been lackluster there as well.
No generals sturdy enough to push past teenage anarchists
Back to the strike lacking a “general” – this became evident on the very first day of nationwide protest (December 5).
A few hundred Black Bloc protesters – who are either undercover police or anarchist idiots with daddy issues – held up 250,000 union-led protesters for four hours in Paris.
It was not an incredible show of strength by Black Bloc but an appalling display of poor leadership from unions. Yes the cops – who have way more guns, defensive armaments and training – did nothing to stop Black Bloc, but they never do: those are their orders from above, and this is old news.
What I want to know is: why did none of the union leaders have the skill to say, “We can’t let these skinny punks stop our first demonstration and provide the MSM with riot footage – that will scare the average person away from protesting and weaken our strike. Onwards! We march and Black Bloc can’t stop us!”
And Black Bloc would have stepped aside in two seconds. They don’t have weapons, they were vastly outnumbered and they are mostly trembling 21-year olds. The violence that day was piddling – truly 1% of what a rough Yellow Vest demonstration was like.
But no union leader could grasp this reality, apparently.
Certainly, no union leader was willing to be at the front line to push ahead and tell Black Bloc that their democratic right to protest peacefully would not be denied. Cops would have never stepped in to prevent protesters from confronting Black Bloc – that would mean protecting Black Bloc openly.
Union leaders may feel their precious brains need to be protected at all costs, but their tactical capabilities are even worse than their leadership capabilities.
I don’t know what will turn around the general strike now?
Unions have fumbled away golden opportunities and failed to apply pressure when they could have. They have, like Macron, ignored the importance of democratic public opinion.
Furthermore, there are right-wing unions and left-wing unions, after all – they do not all think alike. France’s largest union is right-wing. France is not a “socialist” country like the US claims – their political revolution was way before 1917, and it failed, too. And quickly.
The only winner here will be the Yellow Vests – their view that unions are indeed part the inept and/or corrupt mainstream political system will be vindicated if unions don’t right the ship.
Did unions ever really want to win? Their tactics don’t give that impression – it looks more and more like this “general strike” was all to give the show of resistance, not to actually resist.
However, in the short term it’s not like Yellow Vests can provide a political solution to aid the average Frenchman – it took Italy’s Five-Star Movement eight years to win actual power.
Taking a longer, historical view: in 2017 France’s two mainstream parties were swept out of power for the first time in postwar history. If they continue on their losing track, 2020 may prove to have been the year the same broom was applied to unions. What comes after that, is the question.
Thanks Ramin!
Your reports give always insight.
Largest union for Paris train transport just called off strike.
What – members got annoyed at having to strike 1 week for every 1 day everybody else went on strike?
Terrible management by unions….
https://www.thelocal.fr/20200118/union-calls-an-end-to-paris-metro-strike-after-six-weeks
@Ramin Mazaheri
Yes, Ramin, the unions are part of the corrupt MATRIX control system. They have too much invested in the status quo, political and economic control system(s) to break free of systemic slavery.
The revolution is/will be mental and spiritual, not institutional and not religious either. Neither the press, nor the unions, nor the government, nor the church(es), nor the banking system are capable of, or interested in, reforming themselves.
There will be no political party, no slate of reformist, political candidates, no “great” leader, no new political ideology that will reform the systemic, global, putrid rot. The massive criminal corruption is everywhere, in country after country, the world over.
The way out is in, and few there be who find it.
Richard;
Wisely said and well. Although I tend to see the Chinese achievement as an exception to your generalization. And Russia is stumbling forward, well guided from within, as I see it. At some point the inner awakening must take an integrated spiritual and cultural form of material manifestation, would you not agree? It must result in some form of holistic humanistic balance. This cannot be avoided if we are going to dignify the process as being a “liberation.” That would result in it having a definable political character. Admittedly we are not there yet, hence the confusion all around.
@ Snow Leopard
There is no political solution to the world’s problems. Barring a massive, global, upgrade of human mentation and spiritual awareness there is no hope.
As for China? The land of ubiquitous millions and millions of surveillance cameras everywhere, and life and career determining, social credit scores that are determined by faceless bureaucrats, and monitored and enforced by unblinking, unfeeling, digital A.I.?
Technocratic totalitarianism is a moral and political dead end. No thanks. I highly doubt that a technocratic, digital, totalitarian, Chinese Communist Party is humanity’s salvation.
But in reality, this is essentially the same system that is rapidly being put in place in the USSA and other countries all around the world. Massive, state surveillance and digital totalitarianism is not the way to the promised land.
Let’s not pretend that totalitarian technocracy is a great leap forward for the human race — on the contrary, it exceeds George Orwell’s worst imaginings. That’s what 5G is all about, so that the machines can communicate reams and reams of data between themselves, at globe-spanning, blinding speed, reams of data about us, the better to (mis)manage the human herd.
F**k the machines. I don’t need 5G or 6G, and neither do you. But world-managing, human-herd-wrangling A.i. supercomputers do.
It matters not to me in the slightest if the Chinese are in charge of the programming, instead of the USSA.
Our future is biological, human, humane and sustainably, ecologically balanced, or we don’t have a future. Period.
It’s not a social-credit-score, digital, A.I. breakthrough that we need, but a pan-human, global, mental, moral, philosophical and spiritual breakthrough.
Huwaii cannot deliver that; neither can MicroSoft, Apple, Google, etc.
Our future is not 5G, whether of Huwaii or Apple; it matters not.
Our future is profoundly **human** or we do not have a future.
Throw the iPhone away. Screw it.
For starters, I recommend a massive, global, tree planting initiative on the part of anyone and everyone who desires to put trees in the ground, with a preferential focus on planting native species, native to the region where the tree planting takes place. This planet has a deforestation crisis, and if we do not urgently GET BACK TO NATURE we are all going bye-bye, and not in the far-flung future, either.
As the great forests die, are burned down, cut down, bulldozed down — we will follow shortly thereafter. Remove the great forests and the climate changes radically, rainfall declines, oxygen production declines, wildlife species die out, rivers silt up, etc. & etc. The follow-on negative effects are numerous and not long in arriving.
I see very serious tree planting worldwide in our immediate human future, or else there will be no human future on this planet.
I don’t see any great ecological movement coming out of China, to the contrary. Look at what’s happening in Brazil and Bolivia — cutting down the tropical Amazon rain forest to grow soybeans, miles and miles of soybean fields, a lot of which are exported, by the freighter load to China, to feed 1.5 billion hungry mouths (and also to Europe).
China regularly sends 250 ship fishing fleets into Ecuadorean waters, where I live, to strip the ocean of any and all sea life — for export back to China. Fish, squid, sharks, octopuses — they reel it all in. You know, 1.5 billion hungry mouths to feed. The Chinese even send their huge, factory fishing fleet into the waters around the Galapagos Islands, site of the most rare, and biologically precious life forms on the planet. They don’t care about marine ecology and sustainable environmental policies.
I don’t look to the Chinese as some “savior” — in their own, 1.5 billion person way, they are just as rapacious and destructive as the USSA.
They’re also here in Ecuador mining gold and exporting it back to China, and trampling on indigenous legal, property, environmental and territorial rights in the process. This is the same thing that the Spanish did during the colonial period. In that regard, the Chinese are not all that different from the Spanish Empire’s gold mining mania, only that the modern Chinese technology is much more powerful and advanced.
Something like 90% of Ecuadorean petroleum production (most of which involves destroying large tracts of virgin, Amazonian, tropical forest to extract), is also promised to China, in lieu of payment of billions of dollars in loans that the Rafael Correa government took out from the Chinese a few years back, at interest rates as high as 8%! Oh, yeah, those Chinese are great environmentalists and humanitarians. \sarcasm\
Look, the Chinese don’t care — they want their thousands of tons of gold (just like the Spanish did), they want their millions of tons of fish, they want their millions of barrels of petroleum, they want their millions of tons of soybeans — the Amazon rain forest be damned, the indigenous communities of South America be damned, the ecology of the oceans and seas be damned. It’s business. Yuans. Hard cash. You know, making the abacus zing!
And, please, spare me the Pepe Escobar happy talk about the benign intentions of Beijing. I don’t rust Beijing anymore than I trust Washington, DC. I don’t trust either system, and my view is that no one who is sane should.
The new, modern, nation-wide network of surveillance cameras that is being installed here in Ecuador is also Chinese technology. There are cameras sprouting up everywhere. It seems that the Latin American Big Brother is to speak Mandarin, and not George Orwell’s English.
F**k Big Brother. I don’t give a sh!t if he speaks Mandarin and the police state technology that he uses is “Made in China” — along with all the other, cheap, “Made in China”, plastic crap that clutters the stores these days.
I absolutely don’t look to China for salvation. I certainly don’t look for salvation, either, to the USSA or the corrupt governments in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa or Latin America.
Something new must happen on this planet, and very, very soon, or we are all toast.
To get things rolling, I suggest a massive, global, grass roots, spontaneous outpouring of native tree planting, all over the world. If we cannot even motivate ourselves as a species, a global human collective, to plant trees, to get back to Nature, we’re out of here. It’s all over.
Either we get back to natural basics, or that’s it. We’re done.
5G neither wanted nor needed. Huwaii and Apple can both shove it.
Richard – Thank you for the info re Ecuador, and Chinese extractive economics. At heart I believe both of us are saying the same thing. Our respective comments reveal what I consider merely a difference of emphasis, which I believe to be peripheral to the main point. Salvation hinges – as you say clearly – upon a spiritual evolution in our humanity. Totally clear to me. Which is why I responded supportively to you in the first place.
Subject says it all ( Date: Dec 19, 2019 )
French unions meet prime minister to sell out mass strike to defend pensions
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/19/fran-d19.html
Striking is just so inconvenient for the workers, don’t you agree? :-)
“Furthermore, there are right-wing unions and left-wing unions, after all – they do not all think alike. France’s largest union is right-wing. France is not a “socialist” country like the US claims – their political revolution was way before 1917, and it failed, too. And quickly.
The only winner here will be the Yellow Vests – their view that unions are indeed part the inept and/or corrupt mainstream political system will be vindicated if unions don’t right the ship.”
As always, I learn from Ramin’s political insights. When he writes that France’s political revolution was way before 1917 and it failed quickly, I interpret this to mean that it was merely a bourgeois democratic revolution only, well contained by the bourgeois Napoleon, before even that was put down by the English Capitalist empire. What followed was the external imposition of two centuries of deliberately engineered capitalist corruption. The English installed a truncated regime (restored the Bourbons) that placed in power the worst elements of reactionary French culture. What resulted was the promotion of bourgeois “individuality” in a classically alienated French manner. As a result now the French are all either Catholics or Cartesians psychologically. Which means they are culturally incapable of real philosophy. Look what their universities produce. Variations on the theme of bourgeois emptiness. What did Marx call it? “the poverty of (French) philosophy.” That really means they are nothing, culturally emptied out, yet arrogant in their sense of superiority. It has been said that all they are interested in is good wine, good (superficial) conversation and adultery. It is now a dead culture without any living unitive inner vision. Which leaves it a cultural center of imperialism, French style. But at least they can cling to their private, hyper-individualist, dreams of bourgeois comforts right!
More compassionately put; the French are trapped inside two invasions. One being the invasion of Vatican Roman Catholic religious false consciousness. The other being the Anglo-Zionist imperial control of their power structure. Bought about by the military victory of the Duke of Wellington in 1815.
Corrupted Trade Unions are a vital ingredient of the Capitalist system. They are to be found in all countries within the capitalist empire. Death squads, combined with inducements of sinecure and a moderate standard of middle class living for the union officials is their winning combination. This capitalists call “freedom.”
Is this what Ramin has to plough through day after day?
sense of superiority and emptiness?
sounds more like society in Amerika or England, but France…
leave France alone. that’s all we ask for
“sense of superiority and emptiness?
sounds more like society in Amerika or England, but France…
leave France alone. that’s all we ask for”
That maybe what you ask for, but Snow Leopard did hit every nail deep and hard. Having lived well over half my adult life in France and with enough other serious foreign experiences (including several years in the USSA) behind me to compare matters, I can only agree with what he wrote and then some. There are very honorable exceptions to the rule but many Frogs I know are of the superficial kind that I encountered oh so often in the US and many countries under their influence. The French have no backbone, just look at how mostly all of these so-called connoisseurs of ‘good’ food have embraced Ronald McDonald and his tasteless pigslobber for f@cktards… Utterly pathetic.
The CIA etc excel at buying out opposition leaders – the US, UK, and now France it seems, have co-opted union leaders.
Unions are real, their complaints are real, but even this site fails to air their grievances
The fact that CIA controls leadership, well that is easy, every time a new group begins, the agents infiltrate, and out of magic a ‘leader’ evolves. Work every time, and in every country.
Yes, everything is controlled opposition, and every site on the internet.
https://www.beltandroad.news/2019/11/30/israel-a-chinese-bridgehead/
We hear a lot about France’s union problem, but nothing about Israel? Why is that? All unions on earth need to work together to fight the NEO-CON agenda ruling the earth.
The unions and the yellow vests are constructs ultimately controlled by the powers that be.
All one needs to see to understand what is going on in France, the UK, and the EU is the front cover of ‘The Economist’ 2017 Year in Review. In the portion of the front cover image represented by the ‘Hermit’ one can see the boundary of France cojoined with England and the tower of Christ struck down, one sees the advent of yellow vests and the arrival of militant unionism.
Macron is a word and that word means ‘a mark’
Macron worships the roam god Jupiter.
He is no friend of mankind.
Not the Yellow Vests movement, what was depicted on the front cover was other social action than the YV. Look it up.
Why are Israels Unions Mute on this subject, of China building all their public transport projects?
The left, or so called NEO-LIBS seem to not even be the owners of the MSM anymore, we only hear the NEO-CON point of view.
I would argue, that French-Unions are much in the same pot as the Israel-Unions, even though the represent a majority of common citizens, they don’t control the free FED Fiat spigot, thus they “Get No Respect”
To answer your query, both in France, and in Israel the Union leaders are being paid off, to go along with the program. The program seems to be a culling of the left.
https://www.beltandroad.news/2019/11/30/israel-a-chinese-bridgehead/
For detail on this subject in Israel google “Israel unions fight port ashdod china investment”, but its not just ports, and all huge infrastructure projects in Israel are now being managed, labored, and paid by China.
What comes after that, is the question.
…
More of the Same.
The ANZ have 10’s of 1,000’s of highly trained agents waiting in the wings to be made famous by their MSM, to offer new hope, and new music to the young.
How long can this be done? To infinite.
The ANZ grooms and plans out 2-3 generations, to ensure that their ‘spawn’ are compensated by annuity’s for perpetuity. This is/how why it works, to ensure that your great-great-great grandchild never has to work, you must have an agency in the City-of-London that plan’s war’s out 2-3 generations, so that you always know the time to sell&buy, they systematically drop the price of land all over the earth, and then rebuild and make themselves richer, which funds the perpetual ‘lucking lotto genetic fund’. I have know many such children, at 18 years of age to get +1 M USD for life, and never have to work.
Managing and corralling the riff-raff is easy, that’s why all colleges have political-sci shools where students can learn an infinite number of ways to control the masses, and feed them shit, and keep them in the dark.
Thank you Ramin for this very informative update on the French ‘general’ strike. You’ve hit the nail on the head. The injection of the working class into the Gilets Juanes movement changed things qualitatively by adding the social power of labour to the struggle. But it’s been desultory at best, and has been undermined and made as ineffective as possible, despite its popularity and many symbolic gestures of unexpected solidarity (from lawyers, opera singers, etc).
So the short answer to the key question, “Did unions ever really want to win?”, is “No”.
The most important role of the trade union bureaucracy, and also reformist workers parties, is to thoroughly demoralise the working class into not struggling, to making it believe fervently that protests, strikes and class struggle in general is futile, that it is powerless and must instead place its faith in appealing to its ‘betters’, and in peaceful, legal reformism. Above all the working class must never be allowed to discover that it has a historic role to play in liberating humanity from the current impasse — because of its real social power in stopping and starting production and distribution. However, entrenched trade union misleaderships are also experienced enough to know that to hold onto their power sometimes it’s necessary to let the rank and file blow off steam by going on strike, protesting, and so on. All the time they pretend to ‘lead’ the strike to victory but at every step they sabotage it.
In the immediate sense of quelling any potential for workers struggles and uprisings, the reformist leaders of workers organisations serve the vital role as ‘labour’s lieutenants of capital’. The trade union bureaucracy, which for its fealty is rewarded crumbs from the bourgeoisie’s feast of profit bloat, is very adept and willing at stabbing strikes and other working class struggles in the back, and at scapegoating cheap ‘foreign’ labour, for example, to divert attention from the real causes of unemployment, de-industrialisation, etc. Such chauvinist poison plays into the hands of the fascists, and when the trade union bureaucrats are seen to sell the workers struggle out to defeat, they create ever more sympathisers for fascism. These social and political roots of opportunism in the labour movement have been permanent features of capitalism since at least its imperialist phase, from the beginning of the 20th century.
Unless Macron does something very foolish, it’s very unlikely that this strike movement will be turned around to win. Which is such a shame because the French working class when in struggle so often shows the rest of the world such exemplary panache and elan, but this time it’s being smothered by the labour traitors by a strategy of waste and attrition (ie, demoralisation) — unless Macron does something so stupid that unleashes a maelstrom that not even the trade union and social democratic/reformist misleaders can contain.
What’s missing of course is a determined leadership with a program to win. Such a leadership is forged in struggle, forged also in struggle against the ‘best’ efforts at betrayal of the current trade union and social democratic misleaderships. This is the necessary condition for winning a general strike and more. For what does a genuinely effective general strike immediately pose? it’s: Who will rule?
As long as unions maintain hierarchical structures they will fail to free the underclass and the wage slaves from their Capitalist shackles.
Union leaders can be bought and sold like farm stock.