‘We are fed up!’ French workers and youth fight back
As I walked through the main camp of the Nuit Debout protest movement in central Paris, I was taken back to the days of the Occupy movement in 2011.
The Place de la République was full of thousands of people, young and old, but mainly young. There were music and buskers and street stalls advertising workshops and discussions on every political topic you could think of.
A general assembly was taking place on one side of the square, and thousands of people were listening to students and young workers, one after the other, getting up and airing their grievances. The mood back in 2011 was, for a while, one of optimism and hope, and here too people are talking of a new political awakening and of a new generation who are fed up and ready to fight for a better society.
The Nuit Debout (“Arise at night”, or “Up all night”) grew out of the fight against the proposed labour law being touted as the “way forward” by Socialist Party president François Hollande. The legislation would in fact take workers’ rights in France back many decades.
Among other things, it would enable bosses to force employees to work more than the maximum 35-hour week, while cutting overtime rates, winding back unfair dismissal rights and slashing compensation payments for sacked workers.
Unions were slow to respond to the attack, but eventually called two general strike days for 9 and 31 March. The first strike drew around 400,000 workers to the streets of various cities. The second was much larger, with more than 1 million protesting across France. Out of this strike movement, unaligned left wing activists decided to organise a sit-in in Paris following the 31 March rally. Nuit Debout was born.
In this sense, the movement is fundamentally different from the Occupy or Indignados movements of 2011. Nuit Debout has its roots in the workers movement and has as its main goal the repealing of the proposed anti-worker legislation. It is rightfully seen by most as an extension and expansion of that movement.
As I walked around the crowd in the Place de République, I found many friendly and enthusiastic people to talk to. One phrase was constantly repeated: “We are fed up!”
Gaspar, a young kitchen hand who was waiting for his friend to join him, said, “I’m mainly here for the labour law, but really there are so many other issues. I think a lot of people here want to see a totally new and different society”. He pointed to the multitude of political banners around the square: from refugee rights, to public housing access, to improving pensions and welfare.
As I walked further through the crowd, I found Anaise, a university student who had just finished work and made her way to the camp. “Everything about this movement interests me”, she said. “We’re sick of austerity, we’re sick of unemployment and we’re sick of being tricked by politicians.”
The feeling of having been tricked or betrayed by Hollande is widespread. The Socialist Party was elected in 2012 on a wave of mass resentment at former conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy had used vile racism and far right rhetoric to try to rally public support behind his neoliberal agenda.
In 2010, his government successfully raised the pension age, but not without unleashing a mass strike wave that swept the country, terrifying the European elite and ultimately leading to his electoral downfall.
There was hope that Hollande would be better, but he has proven to be just as bad.
Ugo, a young socialist and member of the New Anticapitalist Party, said that Hollande is trying to push through changes that the capitalist class has always wanted, but that the conservatives have never had the courage to attempt. “Had Sarkozy tried to do even half of what Hollande is doing, we would already have seen continuous mass strikes, far beyond anything we are seeing now”, he told me.
Even though the various factions of the union movement claim to be independent of the political process, it is obvious that they are less willing to fight a social democratic government than a conservative one – perhaps because the question “whereto from here?” generates a more radical answer than simply changing government if a movement should deepen and radicalise.
A radical, prolonged and determined campaign of strikes can, and must, defeat this law. “It will be hard to beat the government if we can’t manage to get successive general strikes over many days. The ruling class wants these reforms too badly”, Ugo said.
The recent strike days, as well as the Nuit Debout occupations, have solidified opinion against the government’s proposals. More than 70 percent of the population oppose the attacks. And in a country where the far right National Front is fast becoming the most popular force in politics, having a movement like Nuit Debout that is directly tied to a popular cause, while simultaneously arguing for the rights of refugees and against racism, is important.
How the movement develops in the coming days and weeks is anyone’s guess, but there are more strikes planned. “There is huge potential for radicalisation in this movement”, Ugo said. “If anything should start to change the political situation in this country, it will be spurred on by the actions of the radical youth who are occupying squares right across France.”
