A plan for capital, against labour
Without any surprise, Borne presented on January 10 the counter-reform of retirement, after months of talks with trade union leaders and a final bargaining with LR:
- Postponing by 2 years the legal age of retirement, which passes from 62 to 64 years.
- Increasing the duration of contributions to earn a full retirement pension, which will pass from 42 to 43 years as soon as 2027 instead of 2035.
- Extinguishing special retirement schemes of the RATP, EDF, ENGIE, RTE …
- Preserving special retirement schemes (“bonus”) of police and military.
This project must be presented to the council of ministers on January 23, discussed at the National Assembly starting on February 6, integrated into the amended budget of Social Security, to be applicable on September the 1st.
Unconditional withdrawal of the Macron-Borne-Dussopt project!
Neither was this project negotiable in the previous months, nor is it today acceptable or improvable. Only one watchword is called for: total withdrawal of the law project against retirement pensions!
The latest report of the Advisory Council for Retirement last September had prepared the ground, as each time. The arguments for this 6th attack since 1993 to make people work longer and to lower the mass of pensions are always the same: to improve a few cases, to save “our” system … In fact, the book-keeping imbalances are caused by the State itself, and in particular by the growing exemption from social contributions of bosses.
While waged workers create the overwhelming majority of wealth in society, material ones and immaterial ones, the question is to lower the total wage (direct and indirect) to increase profit. The restriction of rights of waged workers during the first mandate of Macron, the diminution of taxes and social contributions of employers and rich people that goes on, the recent attack against the unemployed, the broken-down condition of public hospitals and the recent reshaping of professional teaching … fit into this offensive of capital against labour.
It is also the pursuit of profit that explains the march towards the climate catastrophe, which is not willed by the bourgeois States, but which they are unable to prevent.
What is the use of “social dialogue”?
Macron had at the onset announced his intentions. However, the trade union officials continued to sit in the Advisory Council for Retirement. However, all trade union leaders came to the summons of the president and the government, as if it would change its opinion and take the side of labour against capital!
The Minister of Labour has led three cycles of concertation with the social partners since October. I have personally met three times, and again last week, the leaders of trade union and employers’ organisations. Each one participated to the discussions. This dialogue was useful. (Élisabeth Borne, Speech, January 10)
The joint management withing the ACR and the negotiation of antisocial plans are useful to the government. Not to workers. They make believe that the bourgeois State is neutral. They prevent the face to face of the government at the service of capital and of the mass of workers defending firmly their conquests.
The repeated “days of action” never led to victory
This connivance is found again in the fact that the inter-union CFDT-CGT-FO-SUD-UNSA-FSU-CFTC-CGC does not demand the withdrawal of the project and satisfies itself to decree a first “day of action” on January 19.
Besides, the Macon-Borne- government does not fear at all the repeated “days of action,” which progressively reduce the fighting spirit of workers. This is what led to the defeat each time in the previous battles to defend retirement pensions in 2003, 2010, 2013 and 2019-2020. The government barely fears any more the “renewable strikes” launched site by site, which are dispersed, which isolate and exhaust the most combative workers without any more result.
Will one start again and again, with “strong times,” a mobilisation “which keeps with duration,” the renewable strike in a few sites, while the trade union leaders continue to call for days of action and to ask to renegotiate the attack against retirement pensions?
The political assistants of the trade union apparatuses try to prevent the general strike
LFI calls for a “march for retirement pensions” on January 21, with the POI, which also does not call for the withdrawal. This fits into the multiplication of symbolic protests (in the streets or in Parliament) that leave the government cold. For the rest, LFI, as the PS and the PCF, approves the initiatives of the inter-union. All promise to clash swords at the National Assembly at the moment of discussion. And then? The government has protected its rear with LR, and if needed, it would resort to the 49.3.
All assistants of trade union bureaucrats, even those which have no Members of Parliament, have carefully avoided to lead in trade unions a fight against “concertation.” Today, they call on workers to obey the apparatuses.
Men who did not want the General Strike, who deny the political nature of the General Strike, and fear above all the consequences of a victorious strike, must inevitably direct all their efforts towards keeping it within the bounds of a semi-political semi-strike, that is to say, towards emasculating it. (Trotsky, May 6, 1926)
The 2021 split of the NPA does not fight to impose the general strike, but decides for the “renewable” one that does not bother the leaders of the CGT and of SUD.
No half-measure is thus possible, one must put on the table a battle plan that allows to mobilise large sectors of our class, whose anger in face of the government, but also of the high cost of living, is already tangible, in a renewable strike, the only one able to force Macron’s hand. There is an emergency. (Révolution permanente, January 10)
The NPA just broke at the end of 2022. The pro-NUPES fraction does not fight to impose the general strike, but aligns itself on the scattering organised by LFI and the trade union leaders.
Let us participate to all initiatives for mobilisation that will take place, notably to the interprofessional strike of January 19 called by all trade unions, and to the demonstration of January 21 in Paris called by the youth organisations. (NPA current B, January 10)
The other fraction does not fight for the general strike, but also aligns itself on the apparatuses of the FSU, of SUD and of the CGT.
On Tuesday January 17, the staff in education will be on strike for hirings and to defend retirement pensions. On Thursday January 19, a first day of interprofessional strike will be organised, called by the inter-union. On Saturday January 21, a national demonstration will take place, called in particular by several youth organisations. We must from now on prepare these first dates. (NPA current C, Communiqué, January 10)
LO does not fight to impose the general strike, but for the basis to obey to “strikes” decreed by the bureaucracies of the CGT and of the FSU.
The main thing will thus depend on workers themselves. We must find in ourselves the energy and the determination to make Macron retreat. At the moment, the massive opposition to this attack is measured only through opinion polls. Well, it will be needed to express it in enterprises through strikes and in the streets with mass demonstrations! (Nathalie Arthaud, January 9)
Let us impose the general strike to win!
Now, the multiple proofs of dissatisfaction in hospitals and in professional high schools, the massive strike in refineries during the autumn, the strike of the workers of the SNCF at the start of winter, indicate that the proletariat has the resources to preserve its rights, to obtain the withdrawal of the project, to inflict a defeat to the Macron-Borne government.
To win, one must hold up the force of the whole working class in the general strike until the withdrawal. Why beat about the bush? The convergence of struggles, that can only be the general strike! The “all together,” that can only be the general strike! The general mobilisation, that can only be the general strike! There is no other mean to defeat the government.
One must organise to go beyond the trade union bureaucracies. Everywhere, in enterprises, in offices, in hospitals, in educational establishments, in faculties, etc., one must build committees of action for the general strike, coordinate them together, so that they intervene in general assemblies, in trade union sections, on the line: to defeat the government, general strike!
One must build the force that will impose the general strike. Join this fight. Make contact with the Groupe marxiste internationaliste.