In recent months France has seen its biggest protests in 20 years, with up to 2.3 million people on the street at a time. June 6 was the 14th day of nationwide protests and strikes since January. In Motion met one of the unions behind the protests as they prepared for their general assembly.
LUCAS FRANCIS CLAVER
The French did not invent strikes and labour fights — but they sure perfected them. A look on the recent months of news coverage from French protests against their government’s proposed retirement reform clearly shows it. You can also just grab a dictionary and look up the word “sabotage”. The French invented it.
A “sabot” is a type of wooden shoe, commonly used by French workers throughout history. Legend says that during labour disputes in the 1870s, French factory workers would throw their sabots into the machinery to stop production with sabotage. The 1870s were also when France got their first labour union — the “Confédération Générale du Travail” or, simply, CGT.
In Motion visited CGT’s Alpes-Maritimes branch at their general assembly on May 31.
Anticipation, comradery, anger
“I am not sad, I’m angry,” Nathalie Battin says as she re-lights her home rolled cigarette for the eleventeenth time. “Very, very angry.”
In Motion meets Battin outside the congress hall, Salle Ecovie, in Carros just a few minutes north of Nice. We are in the region of Provence-Alpes-Côtes d’Azur and the sun has a mind to show us why this is such a favoured holiday destination. It is hot. Behind the backsplash of rising mountains and the rare gust of wind is the calm within the storm.
In a few hours the general assembly of CGT Alpes-Maritimes will begin — as it does every three years. More than 170 people, representing 59 of 118 trade unions within the branch, will gather. On the agenda is voting for the new general secretary — everyone knows it will be the deputy, Céline Petit — as well as discussing the direction they will take for the next three years, but on everyone’s lips are the retirement reform and the ongoing protests.
The attendants greet each other with “camerade” — comrade — and everywhere you look red CGT banners hang accompanied by slogans and caricatures of President Emmanuel Macron.
Nathalie Battin is 53 and has been an active member — what the French call a “militant” — of CGT since 1997. At the time she lived in Paris and was already working for the Ministry of Finance, which she still is. She has been protesting since her teen years.
“Of course,” she says.
When Battin moved to Nice in 2019 she quickly became the treasurer for the CGT Alpes-Maritimes.
”I changed my life when I moved here, and I wanted to make a difference,” Battin says. “When I started as a militant, I wanted to start a feminist group in the CGT to work for women’s rights. Equal salaries, no violence against women, causes like that. But they also needed someone who could do the finances, so I ended up doing both. It’s okay.”
A big bill to pay forward
Danish professor Jørn Boisen has a Ph.D. in French culture and language from Copenhagen University and has studied the recent French protests extensively — also in a historic context.
“It is a sort of ‘pay-as-you-go’ system. There is no capitalisation or business model behind it — what is collected from the taxpayers this month will be paid to the pensioners next month, meaning that the workforce is paying for the retirees,” explains Boisen.
The problem with this model, explains Boisen, is that as more people live longer and have fewer kids, the taxpayer-to-pensioner ratio has shifted. Macron’s solution to the numbers “not adding up” is to raise the retirement age to 64.
Boisen says that the only alternatives to raising the retirement age would be to raise taxes or lower the amount each pensioner receives.
x$“Those solutions wouldn’t be popular either. Macron’s reform is moving the retirement age a bit, so people stay for a bit longer, and pay instead of gain for a little longer,” Boisen explains.
Since the French pension is a combination of a fixed rate and points it offers a bonus if you stay on the job for longer. The reform will also affect the point system and thereby the French people.
“It will cost me either money or time,” says Battin. “Before the reform you could choose to continue working after 62 to get a bit more pension. I was already planning to stay until 64 for that reason, but now I will have to stay until I’m 66 if I want the extra points.”
Battin has been working in the Ministry of Finance for most of her career. It is an office job with “no heavy lifting” so she is not particularly worried about herself.
“There are people in our society who can’t work till they’re 64 because what they do is tough on the body,” she says. “There are the builders, the home care workers, and so many other people, and they’re tired, their backs are broken.”
A reform long underway
A few years before Nathalie Battin became a “militant” — in 1995 — the French labour unions had successfully fought an extensive welfare reform, including reforms on pension, proposed by former president Jacques Chirac. He ended up dropping his proposal, leaving that job for his successors.
“Back then the government wanted to break the entire system. We won,” as Battin puts it.
Boisen agrees that fear of the people has stopped previous administrations in making the change they found necessary.
“The retirement reform has been seen by many as a mandatory task in some way,” he says. “What distinguishes Macron from his predecessors is that he does it — like he promised. To be frank, Chirac didn’t do anything during his 12 years in office.”
For 2022’s presidential elections, President Macron ran on a platform to reform the retirement system. Back then he proposed a retirement age of 65, but has since changed it to 64.
“There is not a hundred ways to balance the budget,” Macron said in an interview with TV stations TF1 and France 2 in March this year. “Given a choice between opinion polls in the short term and the general interest of the country, I choose the general interest of the country.”
Macron is the first president to be re-elected for a second term since Jacques Chirac, who left office in 2007, but has already announced that he will not run for a third, and that he has taken office to pass unpopular but, in his opinion, necessary reforms.
Fewer comrades, equal strength?
Outside the Salle Ecovie the participants are starting to arrive. “Comrades” are greeted affectionately with cheek kisses and broad smiles.
It is obvious that the CGT members share a passion for their cause and a will to fight, as the union has done for nearly 150 years. But the labour unions in France have seen better days – far better.
Battin has noticed the difference. When she started her work in CGT, she had a feeling of being able to make change by protesting.
“People think we can’t do anything,” Battin says. “This is not true. We can win and we will win. We must make people understand that theyare the power. The CGT is not simply some union, it is regular people like me, like my friends, who do the work.”
The small number of members makes it harder to oppose the government and be heard.
“It has become very difficult today,” Battin says. “Today the government doesn’t want to listen the people, they don’t see the poverty.”
In total only about 8% of the French population is member of a union. Still, the unions are behind 98% of French employment agreements – a unique power that is somewhat disproportionate. In the UK, for example, 26% of employees are in a union and the unions are behind 29% of employment agreements.
Working poor and yellow vests
While the retirement reform may have reignited the fight in CGT and other French labour unions, they have not been missing causes. Workers’ poor salary and working conditions are what sparked the 2018 movement, Gilets Jaunes — The Yellow Vests.
13% of workers in France live off the minimum wage, earning about 1,750€ a month before taxes.
“They have around 1,300€ to live on,” Battin explains. “You can’t live normally on that salary. A small apartment will cost a minimum of 600€ and down here most people need a car to get around, so they have very little money to spend on everything else.”
According to Boisen, this demographic was almost forgotten until the Gilets Jaunes rose in 2018.
The minimum-wage workers are forced to live on a poor diet, she says, they cannot go on holidays, and have limited access to cultural experiences, a key part of French life. The Restaurant du Coeur, a non-profit foodbank, have also seen a rise in demand the past decade with 142 million meals handed out in 2021-22 against 115 million in 2011-12.
“The Gilets Jaunes represented a group of people that the administration and the government had completely forgotten about,” Boisen says. “They were utterly surprised to learn that there were these people who were ‘working poor’. Nobody talked about them — not even the newspapers. It’s a great example of how the French centralistic system is causing a democratic problem.”
The watchdog people
The French president wields a lot of power. When The Fifth Republic — France’s current system of government — was founded in 1958, it was designed by (and in part for) Charles De Gaulle who also became the first president of the republic.
De Gaulle was an army officer who in the 40s had led the fight against Nazi Germany. In France he was affectionately called “Le Générale” — “The General” — and was a popular leading figure whom the people trusted with their lives. De Gaulle believed that a strong head of state was necessary to secure the country after years of turmoil — and a strong head of state is what the new constitution created.
“The French governmental system is aimed at efficiency, clear power structure, and a clear presidential mandate,” Boisen explains. “The opposition will always be a minority, so they entrench themselves for five years, shooting down everything the government suggests. And after the five-year term they switch places and continue.”
One of the more controversial articles in the constitution is Article 49.3. It gives the president the ability to pass legislation without asking the parliament. It can only be used once every term unless it is a budget legislation which the retirement reform is.
Parliament can only stop Article 49.3 legislation with a vote of no confidence against the president in which they need absolute majority. Two such votes have been performed in the French parliament and Macron has survived both.
In a way, the people’s regular protests have been a way of compensating for this lack of dialogue in the parliament.
“The current system means that all the political battles, that should be fought in an orderly manner inside the parliament, become staggered,” Boisen says. “The result is a conflict between government and “la rue”, the people on the street.”
And so, we reach the heart of the French “protest culture”. In a way, it counteracts the otherwise very powerful government when the parliament fails to do so.
“If you are bothersome enough and able to mobilise enough people you can win. That is what we saw with Chirac in ’95,” says Boisen, continuing “but Macron has not yielded, and that is why we see the conflict we are seeing today.”
Vive La République?
While the retirement reform may have been the spark that ignited the people, it is obvious that much more lies beneath.
“The pretext for the protests might have been the retirement reform,” Boisen says. “But if the reform is the locomotive, you have 300 cars being pulled with it. The reform has come to symbolise everything that the people dislike about the government.”
Battin confirms this. It has become a democratic fight.
“There is a problem with our democracy,” Battin says. “Macron said ‘It’s not the people who are deciding’. What does he mean? He is acting like a king, and he is twisting the constitution to get what he wants, no matter what.”
Boisen agrees. A president with that much power makes the whole system dysfunctional.
“The people project everything they dislike onto the president — even though much of it is out of his hands,” he says and elaborates: “To the French people, the president is the personification of every injustice. They could elect John the Baptist and it wouldn’t make a difference.”
So, is there a need for another reform, this time of the political system? The answer, if you ask Boisen, is “probably”.
“First of all, I would suggest a reform of the electoral system to proportionate representation,” Boisen says. “Take the party ‘Rassemblement National’. At the 2017 elections they came in fourth in number of votes, but they only got two out of 600 seats in parliament.”
Battin agrees that the system needs an overhaul.
“It is not possible to go on like that — we need to change the system” Battin says. “We vote for a national assembly, and you can agree or not, but the assembly didn’t vote this time. So, who is making the decision? It’s authoritarianism.”
It is almost 2 p.m. now and the assembly has found their seats. In the coming hours and days, they will negotiate their political direction, elect a new general secretary (Céline Petit was elected on June 1, becoming the first woman ever in CGT Alpes-Maritimes) and — not least — prepare for their 14th day of strikes and protests.
“We fought for our rights. My parents, my grandparents fought,” Battin says and assures: “and I’m going to continue fighting.”
