PARIS, June 6 — While union misleaders are scheduling new mass demonstrations for June 24 — the F.O. confederation is calling for a national strike on June 15 — they and their politician allies have no real strategy to fight the Sarkozy government’s plans to cut 50 billion euros from the budget by 2013; to raise the legal retirement age; and to make workers work longer for a full retirement pension. Instead, they’re offering a repeat of last year’s losing strategy of a succession of symbolic 24-hour strikes and demonstrations.
This will follow actions on March 23 (800,000 marched in 180 cities); 350,000 on May Day; and perhaps a million on May 27, none of which mobilized the working class to launch an open-ended general strike of millions. Meanwhile, unemployment is rising to nearly 4,000,000 (including part-timers who can’t find full-time jobs), 14% of the labor force of 28 million.
The union confederations reveal an underlying weakness in that they must meet still again on June 14 to “decide” whether to call a national 24-hour strike on June 24, in their demands for “dialogue” with the government and for “a new policy.”
It is clear that these labor misleaders and the various political parties (Socialist, Left, “Communist” and New Anti-Capitalist Party) see no alternative to capitalism and only want to organize enough resistance to limit the damage and protect their bureaucratic positions. As CHALLENGE predicted on June 18, 2009, “Only communist leadership, dedicated not to negotiating with the government to ‘improve’ capitalism, but to overthrowing the government and the capitalist system, offers a way forward for the working class here.” That is coming true as this year turns into a bad remake of last year.
It is only through organizing to deliver a knock-out blow — communist revolution — that effective resistance to the Sarkozy government’s “reforms” can be forged. J