“It was 4.30 a.m., there were still a good 200 of us on the picket line, and the mobile [police] units charged without any warning. We were given the full works: tear-gas grenades, Flash-Balls [rubber rounds], water cannons...” says Yann Manneval, the secretary of the local branch of the CGT trade union and also one of the pickets outside the oil refinery at Fos-sur-Mer in the south of France. Manneval was recalling the police intervention on Tuesday May 24th to clear the two barricades erected in front of the refinery and oil depot, all under the watchful eye of police drones and a helicopter. It was “extremely violent” confirms another CGT official, Emmanuel Lépine, the federal secretary of the oil branch of the union.
Even after the blockade had been lifted the tension did not subside. The dislodged activists took shelter in the local union building where they were quickly greeted by yet more mobile police units. “Other activists joined us, alerted by what had happen at the picket,” says Yann Manneval. “The forces of law and order encircled the place, pushing us inside. I think that's the first time this has happened, a union building invaded up to the first floor with tear gas and encircled by masked officers, shields in their hands.” An hour later and the building was finally liberated, as were five union activists arrested a little earlier.
The government has now made clear on several occasions that it will not hesitate to intervene to remove blockades and for the time being is maintaining its tough stance against the protests aimed at the controversial labour law reforms being forced through the French Parliament. “The CGT will find an extremely firm response from the government. We will continue to evacuate the sites blocked by this organisation,” prime minister Manuel Valls told Europe 1 radio on Tuesday, May 24th. The threat of fuel shortages, fed by the non-stop stories of service stations under siege from motorists, serves as the justification for such state action, even if for the moment it seems just 25% of fuel outlets are affected. On Wednesday May 25th police also removed the blockade at the oil depot at Douchy-les-Mines in the north of France.
It is by no means certain that the strategy will be effective. All of France's refineries are now on strike, the final two – run by Exxon Mobil – at Fos-sur-Mer itself and Notre-Dame-de Gravanchon in northern France having done so in reaction to Tuesday's tough state intervention at Fos-sur-Mer. Pickets could also continue at fuel depots.
“Valls and [transport minister Alain] Vidalies can make all the noise they want, the result is that the lorries return but as the despatch personnel are on strike, it changes nothing,” says Emmanuel Lépine. Some 50% of Exxon workers at Le Havre voted to continue the strike while 95% of personnel at oil storage firm CIM voted the same way. At oil firm Total's Grandpuits refinery south-east of Paris 60% of workers voted for strike action at the request of the CGT and Force Ouvrière unions.
Meanwhile dock workers at France's major ports could also join in the dispute. Dockers in Marseille had initially backed a 24-hour stoppage from Thursday May 26th, bBut on Tuesday they voted for a two-day strike instead. At Le Havre the national call for massive strikes on May 26th and June 14th are due to go ahead with the possibility that they could be renewed between those two dates. “There will be zero activity in all ports,” Tony Hautbois, the secretary general of the CGT's ports and docks federation, told Le Monde.
'Traumatised by the failure of 2010'
The clear hardening of the movement in the refineries, petrochemical plants and docks seems to be spreading into other strategic sectors. The CGT's rail section, which is grappling with its own negotiations on the status of rail workers, has adopted the same stance as staff from the Sud Rail union and is now calling for a rolling strike from May 31st. “It's clear that the labour law is affecting our own timetable of demands a bit, but that doesn't mean that we'll stay in our corner,” one railway worker from Normandy explained last week. “We are very aware that the 'basic decree' that they're preparing for us and the employment law are along these same lines. If things still aren't moving for us by the start of June, we'll step things up.”
Unions representing workers in civil aviation who, too, have been involved in difficult workplace negotiations since last year, are also taking action and have called a strike for the 3rd, 4th and 5th of June. CGT members working for the Paris rail network are planning an all-out strike from June 2nd and there are also calls for CGT members to strike in the electricity production sector, including at nuclear power stations. Workers at the nuclear power station at Nogent-sur-Seine south-east of Paris, have already voted to take industrial action.
In other areas, it's more difficult. Even though the CGT's national secretary Philippe Martinez used an interview on BFMTV to appeal for “strikes to be generalised everywhere in France”, they are not taking off in a certain number of sectors. Postal workers have been worn down by internal restructuring they have been going through for months, teachers have worn themselves out in their protests against the reform of collèges or secondary schools, and in general the public sector is not ready to get mobilised over a reform to employment law that affects the private sector and not them.
“Public opinion is clearly unfavourable to the law, that's obvious, but there are real difficulties in getting people to mobilise in some businesses,” says one of the people running the inter-union collective group On Bloque Tout! ('We block everything') whose aim is to stop the employment law reform going through. “People are traumatised by the failure of 2010 over pensions,” he adds, a reference to the pension reforms brought in under President Nicolas Sarkozy's government and which went through despite lengthy mass protests. Moreover the low representation of unions among French workers, particularly in the poorest paid sectors, no longer favours mass protest movements.
The CGT's refinery worker representative Emmanuel Lépine is very aware of the risk that the union is taking is letting the CGT's stronghold sectors take action on their own without a real broadening of the movement. “There's no question of being lambs to the slaughter again,” he says. “We've now opened a window of opportunity for all employees to give them confidence, by saying to them 'it's growing in strength, make the most of it!'. But if within two weeks it's no stronger elsewhere in terms of strikes, then we'll act accordingly.”
As for the government, it is shamelessly stressing the hesitations of the wider union movement. It considers that the current mobilisation is the work of traditional CGT strongholds, a hard core of die-hard activists and “radicals”, seen as a “minority” swimming against the tide. The government bases this argument in particular on its broad analysis of the CGT's last congress, held in April in Marseille. This in effect signalled the end of “collective unionism” with the CFDT union – a united approach split by deep divergences over the employment law reforms – and opted for a hard line, making some observers fear that the union would become inward-looking.
“We are for combative trade unionism, class-based trade unionism, and we work with those who are on the same line. We don't need the others,” Reynal Kubecki, the CGT secretary of the cross-union group Union Locate at Le Havre, said last week.
But this type of analysis does not stand up to the mixed reality of the situation in the workplace this spring. The eight appeals for strike action over the last three months have been led by an inter-union group that includes the FO, FSU and Solidaires unions as well as the CGT. In some of the pickets and blockades at oil depots and refineries some FO members have been involved.
On the roads the majority of lorry drivers are in the CFDT. They did not wait for a call from the union's boss Laurent Berger, and came out and blocked roads last week, before being called into line with the promise that the new employment reforms would be “neutralised” in respect of their sector. Finally, some 1,500 activists from a variety of unions and different local and national groups and federations inside the inter-union group On Bloque Tout! have come together.
“The government, which is in the minority inside its own [ruling] majority, is in no position to give us lessons in democracy,” says Emmanuel Lépine. “There's been a lot of people on the streets on a continual basis for three months, 1.5 million people have said no to the employment law by signing the petition. But strikes at the push of a button don't exist, even at the CGT … striking is an individual right, and it's always up to employees to decide.”
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter