PARIS, March 11 – Demonstrations and negotiations alternate as 6,000 striking undocumented workers battle for “legalization.” This struggle is a significant anti-racist one, given the fact that the strikers represent masses of predominantly African immigrants fighting their racist bosses’ super-exploitation. While the workers’ immediate goal is “legalization,” the key to real victory remains winning masses of workers to understand the long-term need to destroy capitalism — the source of all exploitation — and the bosses’ borders. Only communist revolution can achieve that goal by eliminating bosses and their profit system.
Yesterday, 1,000 undocumented strikers marched in Créteil, eight miles southwest of Paris, demanding “legalization.” A huge banner urged equal rights for immigrants.
Recently rallies were organized in the Paris suburbs of Nanterre, Evry and Bobigny. French urban geography is the opposite of the U.S. Here, the rich inhabit the core cities with the poor relegated to projects in the outlying suburbs.
For several months, strikers occupied the municipal tax office in the Paris suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine.
On March 8, bosses of companies employing thousands of undocumented workers and five unions presented the text of a “common approach” to the Minister of Labor, ostensibly to “pressure” the government to “legalize” immigrant workers. This “strategy” contrasts sharply with the actions of rank-and-file workers: striking, demonstrating and occupying government buildings.
However, the rank-and-file strikers face a crucial problem. With their action now in its sixth month, and despite donations from other workers and unions, their financial situation is becoming more desperate. Due to a split between the smaller bosses (who can less afford to do without even small groups of immigrant workers) and the big bosses (who can more easily withstand the absence of a few workers), compromises are being sought between union negotiators and the struck companies.
Mass Strike Of ALL Workers Needed
The “common approach” may very well produce a “compromise” that, in exchange for partial “legalization” for some workers, would freeze out those workers on the “black market” who are paid cash in hand as well as the mostly women personal care providers. To battle such a concession, and buttress their situation, the strikers would need the mass mobilization by the citizen workers to walk out and shut production on behalf of the immigrant workers. This would unite — and benefit — the whole working class since it would reduce the ability of the bosses to use one group against the other.
The bosses will never agree to end the super-exploitation of immigrants, which contradicts their drive for maximum profits. The bosses and the politicians are on the same side. And the union leaders, in seeking “common ground” with the bosses, rather than organizing the mass of unionized citizen workers to join the immigrant workers on the picket lines, end up defending capitalism’s “negotiations” and the concessions it produces. They are saying the workers and the bosses have common interests, masking the fact that it’s the bosses’ government.
‘I’m here, I’m staying, I will not leave!’
On March 6, 6,000 people marched here from the Place de la République to the Immigration Ministry demanding “legalization.” Signs read, “No to exclusion, abolition of racist and xenophobic laws!”; and, “For the legalization of all the undocumented!” T-shirt slogans included, “I’m here, I’m staying, I will not leave!” They chanted, “Documents for all!” The same day 50 people rallied in Nîmes, in southern France.
On March 5, undocumented workers and their supporters rallied in Bordeaux, demanding extension of the “legalization” procedure to all undocumented workers. Under French law, those in France for a certain time, with employer “approval,” and who work where there is a chronic labor shortage, can be “legalized.”
In Bordeaux this means construction and restaurant workers can be “legalized” but not nurses’ aides, even though the employment bureau has vacant jobs for them. The workers’ collective condemned the exclusion of Algerians and Tunisians, who supposedly benefit from a specific law but whose treatment is even more arbitrary.
‘We Are All Immigrants’
On March 1, 3,000 people rallied at the Paris city hall, part of the “day without immigrants.” Organizers called on immigrants to cease working and consuming that day to show that companies, shops, government offices and schools cannot operate in France without first- and second-generation immigrants. Similar protests were held in Lyons, Marseilles, Rennes, Rouen, Strasburg and Toulouse, reflecting the fact that this movement is not restricted to Paris.
The Paris demonstrators had a banner reading “We are all immigrants!”
The demonstrations are building for a protest march to Nice on the French Riviera, at the France-Africa summit, May 31-June 1.
This five-month strike of undocumented workers highlights PLP’s call to “Smash All Borders!” Historically, all bosses use their militaries to establish borders. They then exploit workers in poorer countries, forcing the latter to immigrate to the richer ones where the bosses can extract super-profits, using racism and deportation threats, lowering standards for all workers.
Only with communist leadership — exposing the “nationality” fraud — can workers unite across all capitalist borders, internationally defying the bosses’ divide-and-conquer strategy. This prepares the ground for a communist revolution to destroy capitalism and free all workers from the system’s oppression in a worker-led society.