French
Government Withdraws
“First Job Contract"
By Rick Kelly
11 April 2006
World
Socialist Web
President
Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin announced yesterday
that new legislation will be drawn up to replace the “First Job
Contract” (CPE), which sparked a massive wave of protests and
strikes in recent weeks.
Leaders of the trade unions,
some student unions and “left” political parties immediately
declared the shift marked a decisive victory for the anti-CPE movement
and signalled their intention to halt further mass mobilisations against
the government.
Demagogic claims of “victory”
by the unions and the “left” parties represent a betrayal
of the anti-CPE movement. Their endorsement of the Gaullist government’s
latest manoeuvre politically disarms workers and youth and paves the
way for future free-market measures aimed at dismantling established
workers’ rights and social conditions.
From the outset, the unions
and the official “left” parties—the Socialist Party
and the Communist Party—sought to stabilise the Chirac-Villepin
administration and dissipate the movement of students, high school youth
and workers in order to prevent it from challenging the French capitalist
state.
Chirac announced yesterday
morning that he had decided to “replace [the CPE] with a set of
measures favouring the professional integration of young people with
difficulty.” Very little information has thus far been released
on the proposed new measures, but they are said to include tax concessions
and subsidies to companies that hire young people deemed to be disadvantaged.
More internships are also to be offered in the generally low-paid service
sector, such as restaurants, hotels and nursing.
According to minister of
employment and social cohesion, Jean-Louis Borloo, the reforms will
involve a government outlay of 150 million euros (US$182 million) in
2006, a minuscule sum that testifies to the token character of the announced
measures.
While the government has
presented these measures as aimed at boosting youth employment without
altering existing employment protections, such claims cannot be accepted
at face value. There is every reason to suspect that Chirac and the
unions have agreed to jointly formulate further legislation in keeping
with the basic thrust of the CPE. The government’s announcement
yesterday followed days of discussion behind closed doors with the unions,
which have repeatedly emphasised their willingness to establish closer
collaboration with the employers and the government.
The European Trade Union
Confederation (ETUC), which the major French trade unions are affiliated
to, last month held a “social summit” together with Europe’s
leading business associations, including UNICE (Union des Industries
de la Communauté Européenne). The unions pledged to support
the “the modernisation of the EU social model” and implement
the EU’s Lisbon Strategy, which includes proposals to implement
pro-business tax cuts and reforms to healthcare and pensions, as well
as increase labour market flexibility.
The French government has
retained a series of other measures that, like the CPE, are designed
to reduce labour costs to French businesses and intensify the exploitation
of young workers. The Contract for New Hires (CNE), which permits companies
that employ fewer than 20 workers to fire employees without cause during
their first two years of employment, will remain in force.
The other sections of the
so-called Equal Opportunity Law, of which the CPE was just one component,
are similarly unaffected by the government’s latest announcement.
The Equal Opportunity Law, which the government promoted as a response
to last year’s riots in Paris’s impoverished suburbs, allows
14-year-olds to begin full-time apprenticeships and 15-year-olds to
do night work, promotes police and army training for unemployed youth,
and strips welfare benefits from mothers if various requirements are
not met.
None of this has prevented
trade union and student union leaders from endorsing Chirac and Villepin’s
announcement. “A historic victory after a historic mobilisation,”
Karl Stoeckel, head of the high school students union UNL, declared.
“Today I think we can say that they [the government] have finally
understood and that we are satisfied,” Julie Coudry, president
of the university student union Confédération Étudiante,
stated. She also said that student strikes and blockades of high schools
and universities should cease.
Trade union leaders issued
statements along the same lines. Jean-Claude Mailly of FO (Workers Power)
declared the CPE “dead and buried” and added that “the
goal has been achieved.” François Chérèque
of the CFDT (French Democratic Confederation of Labour) similarly announced
that “the objective is achieved.” Bernard Thibault of the
CGT (General Confederation of Labour) also proclaimed “success”
for the anti-CPE movement, and said May 1 would be marked as a day of
victory.
The two biggest university
and high school students’ unions, UNEF and FIDL, were somewhat
more reluctant. The students at several universities voted to continue
the blockades after Chirac’s announcement, a fact demonstrating
that the two unions are under considerable pressure from below. They
upheld their call for further demonstrations April 11 and said the CNE
and other sections of the Equal Opportunity Law should be withdrawn
as well.
The Intersyndicale, a group
of 12 industrial, student and high school student unions meeting Monday
night stated its support for Tuesday’s demonstrations, but refused
to call for the withdrawal of the CNE.
Despite all the self-congratulation,
the immediate political consequence of the CPE’s withdrawal is
the strengthening of the most right-wing elements within the French
political establishment, above all, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
The unions bear direct responsibility for this, after collaborating
with Sarkozy on ending the mass movement against the CPE.
Sarkozy has been universally
recognised within both France and Europe as the primary beneficiary
of the recent crisis, and he is the clear favourite to secure the presidential
nomination of the Gaullist Union for Popular Movement (UMP) for next
year’s election.
After staking so much personal
credibility on the CPE, Villepin is now regarded as a lame duck. The
latest opinion poll reported the prime minister’s approval rating
at just 25 percent—equal to Chirac’s. “I wanted to
act swiftly because the dramatic situation and the despair of many youth
demanded it,” Villepin declared in a forlorn speech yesterday.
“This was not understood by all, and I regret it.”
Sarkozy has attempted to
forge a constituency through whipping up the most backward sentiments
in France. He issues direct appeals to supporters of the neo-fascist
National Front on the basis of hard-line anti-immigrant policies, and
bolsters his image as a strong “law-and-order” man through
constant appearances alongside riot police and other law enforcement
agents. He has personally directed the police attacks on the CPE demonstrations,
which have left dozens of people wounded and thousands arrested.
Sarkozy is one of the most
outspoken proponents of “rupture” with France’s established
social protections and employment security provisions, and has argued
in favour of US-style “free-market” reforms. His differences
with Villepin over the CPE were not based on the substance of the legislation,
but rather on Villepin’s failure to seek the prior backing of
the trade unions. Sarkozy favours a corporatist model, in which the
unions are effectively integrated into the state apparatus in order
to help suppress popular opposition to government measures.
The trade unions in France,
as in Europe as a whole, have long fought to establish their credentials
as constructive “social partners” of the ruling elite. Their
alignment with Sarkozy is neither accidental nor incongruous. The unions
agree with the bourgeoisie that it is impossible to maintain existing
workers’ wages and conditions in France within a competitive global
capitalist system.
The question, for both the
unions and the ruling elite, is how to break workers’ resistance
to free-market reform. Many union bureaucrats undoubtedly consider an
authoritarian government under Sarkozy as a potential means of preventing
further upsurges in the working class that threaten their privileged
positions.
There is, moreover, no doubt
that Sarkozy’s anti-immigrant and “law-and-order”
policies are received with considerable sympathy within sections of
the union leadership. Much of the bureaucracy’s personnel are
drawn from the lower-middle-class strata to whom Sarkozy appeals, while
many other union officials were trained in the chauvinist traditions
of French Stalinism.
Sarkozy has already indicated
that he is preparing to take the lead in advancing further “free-market”
measures. According to Nouvel Observateur, shortly after Chirac’s
announcement on the CPE, Sarkozy scheduled a meeting of senior UMP deputies
on May 15 to discuss further reforms “necessary in order to modernise
France.”
Other ministers also indicated
their determination to press ahead with reforms. Jean-Louis Borloo told
Le Monde yesterday that the government was planning further discussion
with the trade unions on labour market “flexibility.”
“We want to discuss
with the social partners [i.e., the trade unions and the employers’
federation] about the problems concerning judicial security of job contracts:
security for the wage earner but also for the employer,” he said.
“One can raise the question of the flexibility by connecting it
to complementary guarantees for the two parties.”
Like the trade unions, the
“left” political parties all responded to the government’s
announcement yesterday by declaring a great victory for workers and
youth. The Socialist Party, Communist Party, and Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire
have all served to keep the Chirac-Villepin administration in power
throughout the CPE crisis, despite its enormous weakness and isolation.
They are now promoting the illusion that the government’s right-wing
attacks can be defeated by mass pressure alone, when, in fact, the first
demand of the mass movement must be the removal of the Chirac-Villepin
government.
Only on such a basis can
a struggle be advanced to install a new government that genuinely represents
the interests of workers and youth, rather than a tiny layer of financial
oligarchs. The critical task is that of breaking from all the established
parties and trade unions and building a new political party based on
a revolutionary socialist and internationalist perspective.