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Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 11:27:17 +0000
Reply-To: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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From: LabourNet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: French truckers win [Reuters]
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After French truckers win, analysts ask who's next
Source: Reuters
PARIS, Reuters. By paralysing French roads and causing economic
disruption across western Europe, France's truck drivers have won a
victory that could whet other appetites in a country with a long
tradition of street protests.
In 12 days of blockades, the truckers forced employers and Prime Minister
Alain Juppe's government to concede retirement at 55 instead of 60,
payment for loading, standby and compulsory rest time and a special 3,000
franc ($600) pay bonus.
To most French people, opinion polls showed, it was a deserved victory for
a harshly exploited group of workers, won in heroic revolutionary style by
barricading the streets.
``They won,'' was the triumphant banner headline of the Communist party
daily L'Humanite, echoed by the left-wing daily Liberation, which said the
strike proved ``struggle pays.''
Yet to many industrialists and supporters of conservative President Jacques
Chirac, it was an alarming example of the willingness of a weak government,
haunted by last year's 24-day public transport strike, to pay almost any price
to prevent another bout of widespread labour unrest.
What Juppe called a ``balanced outcome'' looked suspiciously to them like a
surrender to a special interest group with the power to bring France to a
standstill.
The deal conceded new social rights and regulations at the very time when
the government, warning that France is pricing itself out of international
competition, is trying to loosen labour market regulation and curb a lavish
welfare system.
``The truckers' strike illustrated to a tee this 'French sickness'. It is always
the same: a group of workers who have the power of blackmail take the
country hostage and force the state, which can ill afford it, to intervene and
hand them victory,'' lamented Franz-Olivier Giesbert, editor of the
conservative daily Le Figaro.
The main question among French commentators this weekend was which
group of workers will be next to demand the sort of concessions the lorry
drivers won.
It was the third time in four years that determined strikers have forced a
conservative French government to retreat. In 1993 it was Air France
workers who forced the scrapping of a rescue plan for the loss-making
airline involving job cuts.
Last year, it was transport workers who forced Juppe to withdraw a plan to
streamline the indebted SNCF state railways and make public employees
work longer for a full pension.
The conflict illustrated again that France's anxious conservatives do not share
the determination of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher or U.S.
president Ronald Reagan to set a precedent by taking on and defeating
organised labour.
If Juppe ever contemplated using the police to clear the roads, he quickly
dropped the idea, sensing it would trigger the very national labour revolt
which he is desperate to avoid.
Now France's fragmented and relatively small trade unions are celebrating a
rare victory in the private sector and pondering how to capitalise on their win
for other workers.
Already oil refinery workers plan industrial action next week and their
demands include retirement at 55. But they lack the truckers' power to
paralyse the country.
Meanwhile, some in the financial markets are wondering about Juppe's
resolve to stick to any policy -- including the budget austerity required to
qualify France for a single European currency -- in the face of the threat of
disruption.
That is unfair, say his supporters, who argue that the prime minister is going
to such lengths to avert trouble precisely to preserve the government's central
aim of meeting the conditions and deadline for European monetary union in
1999.
``It may look messy but it preserves the essentials,'' one Juppe aide said. ``If
it gets us through to the new year without a major social explosion, it will
have been worth it.''
That may be a big ``if.'
[12-01-96 at 08:42 EST, Copyright 1996, Reuters America Inc.]
