PARIS, April 15 — Construction workers here have won an illusionary “victory” against Eiffage Construction and Eiffage Public Works, two subsidiaries of the country’s third-largest construction company. A two-week strike brought an overall 2% wage “increase,” which is no increase at all given a 2% inflation rate over the past year, which meant a wage-cut for those workers awarded a 1.7% hike.
The strike froze work on a score of construction sites in Paris and on the 282-million-euro (US $385 million) Great Stadium in Lille. It came within legally-mandated annual wage negotiations.
“It’s the first time that a strike has gone on this long against this company, which makes fat profits but never gives anything to its workers,” said a union spokesman.
The workers had been demanding an 85-euro (US $115) across-the-board hike, averaging to a 3% increase. (An across-the-board pay hike narrows the gap between the highest- and lowest-paid workers, whereas a flat percentage raise widens the gap. Unions here generally demand across-the-board increases.)
Eiffage is the third-biggest construction company in France and the fifth-biggest in Europe. The company’s Public Works subsidiary employs 22,000 workers worldwide. The company made a 232-million euro (US $315 million) profit last year. Company chairman Jean-François Roverato is paid over 133,000 euros (US $189,000) a month.
The strike ended in stages, with the bosses punishing the workers who held out the longest. Thus, Paris workers won a 2.5% raise when they ended their strike on April 11. Construction workers in Lille returned on April 13 and got a 2% raise. The Eiffage Public Works workers in Lille held out until today, the 15th, and so obtained an across-the-board 30-euro (US $40) raise for those making less than 1,765 euros (US $2,400) a month and 1.7% for those making more.
Thus, the company’s manipulations generate bad feelings and competition among the various groups of workers. It hopes this divide-and-conquer strategy will bring it victory in the next round of wage negotiations, scheduled for September 2011.
While the company promotes a law-of-the-jungle race to the bottom, it carefully protects itself from competition from rival capitalists. The French government is the largest single shareholder in Eiffage, owning 20% of company shares through the Strategic Investment Fund (SIF) created by President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2008. This Fund protects strategic French companies against hostile takeovers by foreign capitalists. Such is the hypocrisy of the French ruling class, creating divisions within the working class but uniting against foreign capitalists.
This strike showed once again that workers are fighting giant monopolies and the latter’s government, protecting a financial oligarchy. The choice that global capitalism puts before the working class — given that unions work within this system — is either “put yourself at the mercy of capital and sink lower and lower” or “adopt a new weapon.” This weapon is the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party. We need to build the PLP whose aim is to destroy a system that offers such phony “victories” and erect one that is run by and for the working class, in which workers collectively reap all the value that our labor creates.