To understand this phase in which the current movement against the pension reform in France is taking place, it is necessary to understand the ‘French-style social movement’ (mouvement social à la française), which has been the general framework of mobilisations for more than 20 years. The archetype is the 1995 movement, a movement against the Juppé plan and therefore an attack against the social rights of the public sector workers, and in particular pension rights. The French-style social movement is an alliance between different economic sectors and different trade unions against neo-liberal reforms, so it is always a counter-attack. The French-style social movement has experienced a double crisis, which manifested itself first during the 2016 against the labor laws (loi travail) but also with the Gilets Jaunes movement, which many interpreted as the definitive end of this form of mobilization.

Firstly, 2016 was a moment of radicalisation of watchwords and practices. But it was already the first social movement to take place within the political framework of Macronism, as at the time Macron was still Minister of the Economy. This movement was against a law that aimed at restricting labor rights and was, consequently, of vital interest to the trade unions, as the ‘loi travail’ severely restricted trade union rights and the possibilities of organization and negotiation. However, the trade unions did not push antagonism beyond the extremely ritualized forms of social conflict in France, such as the Tuesday or Thursday demonstration and the strike, and with the form of a ‘pearled strike’ (grève perlée) i.e. without continuity on strike days.¹ One of the issues at stake in the days to come is whether or not the union directions will be able to effectively accompany a continuous strike.

The second crisis is the one provoked by the Gilets Jaunes. The aim of the Gilets Jaunes in the beginning was anti-tax, as the movement began with the rejection of the fuel price increase caused by a tax on CO2 emission. It should be noted that this demand fundamentally asks the question that bourgeois ecology refuses to answer, namely who pays for the increase in carbon emissions within the framework of the carbon markets established by the Kyoto Convention. The Gilets Jaunes movement that started in 2018 attracted only a limited number of trade unionists, probably due to reluctance on both sides. However, where there has been a significant investment of trade unionists is on the side of the grassroots unions invested in the social movement of 2018 which brought together Gilets Jaunes and trade unionists turned Gilets Jaunes, from sectors that are still among the most combative.

At this time, there was also an extension of the struggles from a territorial point of view, which certainly concerned the suburbs, but which in the phase of the Gilets Juanes concerned more particularly the medium-sized cities and rural areas, which in many cases are much less densely populated in France. The classic form of action of the Gilets Jaunes takes place on the roundabouts that can be found everywhere in the French suburbs, a symbol of the small cement entrepreneurs’ control over the territory. We see in the spatial composition of the current movement as a continuity with the Gilets Jaunes who have reinscribed places like the roundabouts at the center of social conflict. It is not a coincidence that many actions organized this time by the unions have taken place on roundabouts.

The Gilets Jaunes movement then experienced a hybridisation at the end of 2019, when Macron announced a pension reform. This reform was not the same as the one currently proposed, but was in many ways worse, as it proposed a movement toward a marketised system as opposed to the system currently based on solidarity amongst workers. In fact, pension funds in France are managed by workers since liberation and are based on a solidarity system. This very powerful movement marked a first step in the ‘yellow vest-ification’ (Gilet Jaunisation) of the strike, of which three characteristics can be pointed out:a strong antagonism with the government, the proliferation of local initiatives, and the use of blockade strikes as the only mode of action that allowed a victory to be achieved. In a certain sense, this strategic diagnosis turned out to be right, because in fact it is one of the only movements in recent years in France to have won something. Today the radicalization of the government on its positions makes visible even for the most moderate unions that only this method is effective in the context of Macronism. It has to be said that the movement can be characterised by a militant ebullience, by the presence of workers’ or neighborhood assemblies in many places, and an intense political activity characterized by mass investment.

In 2019, the presence of climate activists was crucial. We were coming out of a phase in which XR and in particular some of the more radical and openly anti-capitalist currents were organizing with collectives, Gilets Jaunes, queer collectives, etc. We were coming out of a moment of international actions by XR that had managed to federate but nonetheless failed to build an offensive social force on climate issues. Some ecologist comrades had intervened on this occasion with a text that began: ‘The strike against the pension reform does not correspond to what we call an environmental struggle. However, we ecologists are on the picket lines, we support the mobilisations of the railway workers, the gilets jaunes, the teachers, the health workers and all those fighting against the reform. Why do ecologists support the strike?”. The main argument of this text was that the reduction of working hours is an ecological imperative, since any increase in overall working hours necessarily means an increase in the amount of biophysical resources extracted and an increase in the amount of CO2 emitted. This convergence and discourse is now found in many more parts of the current political ecology, which is undeniably a victory for the vanguard of the 2019 movement.

Apart from the specific framework of the 2019 movement in the wake of the Gilets Jaunes, the pension movements in France have a rather interclassist nature, given the tradition of trade union demands, particularly among managers (cadres). The current movement is lead by the broadest possible coalition of unions within what is called an Intersyndicale.²: The defense of pensions has been the revendication of the French cadres movement since the 1930s: this gave a rather surprising spectacle in recent weeks of the remnants of the ‘cortêge de tête’ marching right in front of the CFE-CGC, the general confederation of managers. It is therefore this interclass nature that explains both the immense popularity of this movement in the population and its difficulty in overcoming its limits in terms of antagonism until recently.

It is therefore important to understand that this is not 2016 anymore, when the question was of the radicalization of a workers’ movement that is struggling to exercise its power. We are not in the context of an interclassist movement and the more centrist trade unions such as the CFDT are now able to gather people. This is in stark contrast to the 2019 movement, where a vacuum characterized the trade union processions while the ‘cortège de tête’ more radical and situated in front of the union processions was densely crowded.

March the 7th was one of those days of intense militant activity in pickets and blockades: schools, high schools, and even bus stations in the Paris region. There is a very important political stake to be drawn from this situation, which the energy federations have understood very well: it is necessary to split the bourgeoisie on the pension issue. Since it is in fact already fractured, it is now a question of putting a lever in this opening. This fracture seemed obvious a year ago, since the MEDEF (the French bosses union) had asked Macron not to make his reform. But CGT Energie realized that tax credits and tax exemptions are not enough from the point of view of capitalists for them to agree to be on Macron’s side at all costs. That is why the actions of cutting electricity in Amazon’s warehouses and various strategic places are particularly interesting: apparently tax credits alone do not make it possible to run a factory.

The Reform

After repeating for months that the legal age would be raised to 65 in 2031, the government is finally proposing an increase to 64. Macron made this reform one of the themes of his re-election last year. Indeed, the legal age will be raised to 64, at the rate of a quarter more per year, starting in September 2023 for the generation born in 1961. In reality, the reform is an extension of the Touraine reform voted under Hollande, with the difference that it accelerates the parametric adjustments of this reform: in fact, instead of reaching the age of 43 for a full pension in 2035, with this reform we get there in 2027. This reform is therefore above all an extension of working hours for life.

The reform is an attack on the special pension schemes that will be abolished; these special pension schemes were already at the center of many previous struggles, in particular the 2019 reform that eventually did not take place.

At the center of the pension reform is also the battle over the issue of work arduousness (penibilité). Macron said a few years ago that he does not like the word pénibilité. The issue is a real problem of recognition. For example, the C2P (a fund for workers exposed to occupational risks) was used by 10,000 people, while in France 61% of workers are exposed to at least one occupational risk. Pension reform thus continues with the idea that hard work does not exist. Macronist Senator Patriat explained on TV that hard work no longer exists because all construction and logistics workers now have exoskeletons. This reform demonstrates the Macronist bourgeoisie’s hatred of workers. A Macron’s party spokeswoman, for example, mocked Mouloud Sahraoui, a logistics worker at Geodis and one of the leaders of the very advanced and often victorious struggles in logistics, because he was demanding the right to full retirement at 50, when NUPES demands 60 instead of the current 62.

But this year’s pension reform is quite different from the one presented by Macron at the end of 2019, just before the pandemic. It was a structural reform that would not only lengthen working time, but also transform the pension system into a points-based system. This structural change was obviously preparing the transition to a funded pension system. The aim was to create a new economic sector of French-style pension funds over time. A powerful movement in 2019 had put the government in trouble, with important strikes and a political environment in which the practices of the giles jaunes played a decisive role.

The government then moderated its reform in early 2020. However, the pandemic has completely blocked the polarization process around pension reform, both on the capital and labor sides. MEDEF, the bosses’ union, opposed pension reform precisely because it was considered too polarizing after the lockdown. In any case, capital was massively subsidized at the time. It is therefore necessary to insist that this time we have moved to a parametric reform and not a structural one. The reform changes a specific parameter of the system, namely the legal retirement age, but not the system itself. Of course, this change will lead more and more people to invest in private supplementary pensions since they will no longer be able to retire in good health with the public social security system while receiving a decent pension. However, Macron’s shift to a parametric reform is a symptom of the difficulty of the French neoliberal bloc to propose a social project in the wake of the COVID pandemic.

To understand the link with the 2010 reform, it is necessary to realize that an epistemological and political issue is at stake with parametric pension reforms. The 2010 reform is essentially the same type of reform as the current one, i.e. a parametric reform that increases the length of working time from 60 to 62 years. However, this workers’ management has been complemented by a series of organizations that aim to integrate social security management into the neo-liberal perspective of budgetary balance.

It should therefore be noted that what is often invoked to justify a reform is a budgetary imbalance. In this case, there is the COR (Conseil d’orientation des retraites) that proposes both demographic and macroeconomic models. In 2010, the COR announced that the pension system was no longer in balance. The idea that always comes back is that of a financial panic over the financing of pensions. In fact, the pensions of current pensioners are paid by current workers. This poses the following problem for the bourgeoisie: how to maintain the level of pensions when the ratio of the current population to pensioners is decreasing. Indeed, it is to be noted that this shift fully reflects the gains in labor productivity. It should also be mentioned that in recent years the Committee has almost always been wrong in the reports motivating previous pension reforms.

This time the report proposes four scenarios, only one of which is unbalanced. This is why the political left denounces the reform as a scam. In fact, the reform does nothing to balance the social security accounts, it aims at transition towards a private pension system. The French welfare system is once again under attack from the capitalists. The aims of this reform are to increase working hours in order to increase growth rates and also create new markets for insurance companies. It also marks a conflict of interpretation around the French social constitution. On the left, the interpretation is that the social security system is owned by the workers and should be governed by them, while the right has always interpreted, after the 1950s, that these funds should be managed by the State or by capital.

From a social crisis to a political one

The element that shifted the movement against the pension reform from a social crisis to a broader political crisis was obviously the use by the government of the article 49.3 of the French constitution. This article allows the government to pass a law without the parliament voting on it. The only way to block the law from passing is then a vote of a motion of censure, that if voted brings the government down. This article of the constitution has become since 2016 a symbol of the neoliberal and authoritarian way to rule France. The announcement of the use of this article sparked demonstrations everywhere in France since last week. In Paris, the movement started to gather in front of the Assemblée Nationale on Place de la Concorde at night to protest the authoritarian methods of the macronist regime. Even if a motion of censure was proposed by a centrist independent MP, it lacked 9 votes in parliament to bring down the government.

The failure of this motion of censure made clear that negotiation through parliamentary means was blocked, and at the same time the call from the Intersyndicale to negotiate with the government was at a dead end. It has to be noted that this is the Macronists themselves who burned all the bridges that might have regulated this social conflict. This resulted in various actions against the office of the MPs in favor of the reform all around France. The CGT started, for instance, to organize the walling of some MPs’ offices or against the local offices of the MEDEF.

The corollary of this acute political crisis is the systematic use of police brutality to prevent spontaneous demonstrations from happening. After the motion of censure failed, on March 20th, the gatherings near the Assemblée Nationale were all kettled, and various police brutalities were committed. The strategy of repression from the state made us adopt a more versatile strategy based on the proliferation of places of demonstrations.

But the recent qualitative jump in the movement is deeply related to some very advanced workers in the energy, transport and waste sectors. The strategy of these sectors that have been on strike since March the 7th is the blockade. In the case of the waste sector in Paris, the strike was constructed after an in-depth study of the logistic chain of waste in Paris allowing strikes at choking points such as the incineration plant of Ivry. The idea is that blockades of strategic spots on the logistic chain allow to make work virtually impossible at another point, for instance by keeping the garbage trucks at full-load at the end of the day. By doing that, it is possible to take time the day after to meet with the workers that are not on strike yet and discuss unionization, working conditions, and pensions. These blockades and strikes are the conditions of possibility for the wild-cat demonstrations happening in Paris at night as it allows the garbage not to be picked, so allowing the protestors to burn something in the streets.

In this context the main obstacle to the movement are the workers requisitions. Since Sarkozy’s presidency it is possible for the State to use the police to force workers on strike to go back to work if their action blocks some strategic assets, such as tactical fuel supplies. Obviously these requisitions are used in a distorted way to force, for instance, the refueling of the Paris airports. The mobilization of the workers and the students against these requisitions is central for the continuity of the movement, for the preservation of the strike rights and for the keeping at bay of the police.

On Thursday the movement passed another step towards the generalization of the strike as the movement grew again with 3,5 million people on the street and good numbers regarding the strikes in various sectors. This day was characterized by a proliferation of actions such as the blockade of the Charles-De-Gaulle Airport of Paris organized by the local section of the CGT-Roissy. The demonstration in Paris also saw a surge in conflictuality marking the end of a very calm movement since the beginning. This 9th day of national strike is very representative of the rhythm of these mobilizations : blockades and actions in the morning, demonstrations in the afternoon and wild cat demonstrations in the evening.

This movement attests more than ever the vivacity of the strike as a mode of action, against all the prophecies of its overcoming. Of course, it is not only about the strike in the big factory,asthe strike, the riot and the blockade do not correspond so much to a phase of capitalism as to a way of knowing and acting on production and reproduction. If the outcome of the conflict remains uncertain, the long-term challenge of the conflict is to see if a new generation of rank-and-file trade unionists is able to emerge from this movement, and the massive involvement of youth in the last few days seems to be heading in this direction.