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France: Protestors Rise Up In Their Millions Against Ruling Class
French protestors are rising up in their millions against a ruling class determined to take away their rights. There is anarchy on the streets of France as the mainstream media continues to suppress the scale of events.
30
June,2016
Thousands
of masked protesters and police fought running street battles in
France this week, with police using water cannon to quell rioters who
hurled projectiles at them and destroyed storefronts, joining the
millions of French citizens who have protested against new
anti-worker laws that are designed to protect and enrich a wealthy
elite at the expense of ordinary people.
The
protesters in Paris represent all working class people united,
mobilized, and resisting the greed of globalist elites. Police
involved are violently fighting against the people and protecting the
interests of the ruling class.
However
as the government, police and mainstream media continue to suppress
this important movement’s progress, the people continue to rise up.
Western
mainstream media continues to suppress information regarding the
scale and intensity of the revolution taking place on French streets.
While
the world distracted by the Euro 2016 football championships in
France, the elites are taking away people’s rights and blood is
being shed on the streets.
Maxime Reynié
There
is anarchy in the streets and the police are having trouble keeping
pace. They have begged the protestors to stop the relentless
protests, complained of exhaustion, and have even held their own
protest against ‘the brutality of the protestors’ – that
resulted in a police car getting torched.
The
government have also tried to make protesting illegal, while they
attempt to push the new laws through the lower house without a vote
using a constitutional manoeuvre. With the two chambers unlikely to
agree a final version, the lower house will have the final say, and
the government is expected to use the same manoeuvre to pass the bill
into law without a vote.
According
to an opinion poll published on Tuesday, 73 percent of the French
would be “shocked and appalled” by such a move.
The
new law is referred to by the name of the Minister of Labour Myriam
El Khomri, and was first presented by her in February, sparking a
series of relentless protests that show no sign of stopping.
The
El Khomri legislation was introduced in its original French as the
“draft legislation aimed at implementing new freedoms and
protections for businesses and workers.” To refer to this law as a
new freedom or protection for workers is laughable, and is really a
kick in the face for the people. What the law really does is expand
protections and freedoms for the wealthy elite and no one else.
The
protests began on March 9 with the movement being called “Nuit
debut,” translated roughly as “standing up all night.” The
French ruling class is trying keep control through the police baton
in order to keep the masses down. The El Khomri bill essentially
boils down to stripping people of their rights and giving more
control to the elites. The French job market reform is outrageous for
a country struggling with a high unemployment rate of 10 percent and
a stagnant economy.
Although the movement is centered primarily around the job market reform bill, there are much broader concerns involved, such as: universal basic income, opposition to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), amnesty for undocumented workers, solidarity with refugees, and the gender pay gap. France’s mobilized collective are on a progressive mission to create another world to realize social justice and demand dignity for ordinary people.
President
Hollande and Prime Minister Manual Valls say they will not listen to
the millions of protesters or the massive majority of citizens who
disapprove of the law. Since the French protests began attempts have
been made to hinder their cause. Every measure to dismiss the
protesters has been attempted; everything from police teargas to the
Prime Minister Valls portraying protestors as “rioters” and
“ultra-violent youths.” French Interior Minister Bernard
Cazeneuve had the gall to tell protesters “to find within
themselves a little humanity, tolerance and respect. “
Even
the police have tried to garner sympathy away from protesters when
they claimed they were too “exhausted” to deal with continued
protests. French leaders have threatened a ban on protests, with even
tougher crackdowns by police, after Valls claimed that the protesters
were out “to kill a police officer.” The threatened ban by the
French government on demonstrations was reverted on June 22 after
falling under harsh criticism and backlash.
French
Cops Claim They’re Too Tired to Keep Policing Massive Protests
28
June, 2016
Michaela
Whitton (AM) : Months of mass demonstrations and violence linked to
the Euro 2016 football tournament have left French police begging for
mercy. A heated combination of protests against controversial changes
to France’s employment laws and outbreaks of violence by Russian
and British football fans has taken its toll, leading a union leader
to beg for a reprieve for French law enforcement.
Paris_Police_Jun
2016_FranceProtests opposing Francois Hollande’s proposals to relax
France’s labour code began in March and have been called the
largest and longest-lasting since the French Revolution. While the
government argues the changes are crucial to lower unemployment,
protesters claim they are bad for workers’ rights. Countrywide
protests have included strikes and blockades of oil refineries and
hundreds of fuel depots. Workers also downed tools at the state-owned
rail company.
On
June 14, some masked protesters hurled paving slabs, smashed shop
windows, and burned cars on the city streets. Despite relatively
little mainstream media coverage of the mass protests, a series of
violent images emerged showing police responding brutally with tear
gas, batons, and water cannons. Around 60 people were arrested, and
29 police officers and 11 protesters were injured. Shortly after,
workers’ unions and student organisations called for more street
protests and strikes, on June 23 and June 28, to reject the new
labour laws currently being debated in the Senate.
Earlier
this week, France’s main police union, Alliance, pleaded with
workers to postpone Thursday’s planned day of demonstrations to
give the police time to recover.
“We’re
asking for this demonstration to be postponed, along with any other
static protests as our colleagues on all fronts are exhausted, worn
out and tired,” Frederic Lagache, Alliance deputy secretary general
said.
Describing
the protests as repetitive and very violent, he said the police are
too exhausted to cope with them — especially on top of dealing with
terrorism and violence linked to the hosting of Euro 2016.
Despite
the pleas for respite, the government gave the green light to the
demonstrations — but only if they were confined to a small area of
the city. At least 85 people were arrested in the capital as
thousands took part in the largely peaceful protests. Union officials
said 60,000 people attended the march, but police said the number was
closer to 20,000.
Michaela
Whitton, TheAntiMedia
How the EU pushed France to reforms of labour law
by Corporate Europe Observatory
30
June,2016
The
current struggle in France over labour law reforms is not just
between the Government and trade unions – a European battle is
waged. The attacks on social rights stem in no small part from the
web of EU-rules dubbed ‘economic governance’, invented to impose
austerity policies on member states.
Strikes
and actions across France against reforms of the country’s labour
protections, known as the El Khomri Law, demonstrate the immense
unpopularity of the measures proposed by the French Government.
Chiefly among them, to give preference to local agreements on wages
and working conditions, when the conditions in those agreements are
less favourable than the national norm inscribed in national law.
This is an open attempt to undermine collective bargaining and roll
back the influence of trade union.
Ultimately,
the French Government has formal responsibility for the weakening of
labour protection. But there is no denying that the European Union is
playing an important and perhaps decisive role in the attacks on
labour rights. What we see is the EU throwing its rulebook in the
French workers’ faces. Practically all the new rules on so-called
‘economic governance’ adopted following the eurocrisis have been
applied, and make France look like a EU test-case. The European
Commission, with the backing of the Council, has used the rules on
member states’ deficits to exert pressure, threatening with
sanctions, should the French Government not give in and seriously
reform its labour laws. Simply put, France has been required flat out
to ensure higher profitability for businesses by driving down wages.
How
does all of this work?
Sanctions more likely today
First
and foremost, the reforms in France are related to the country’s
deficit. Like most other EU member states, the state’s finances
looked pretty bad in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. In
2009, a case was opened against France for breaching EU rules which
stipulate that its deficit must be no higher than 3 per cent of GDP.
If taken to the extreme, this ‘excessive deficit procedure’ can
result in a fine of billions of euro,
and – not least in the case of France – a severe loss of face to
its EU partners.
The
‘excessive deficit procedure’ was given more teeth with the
so-called ‘Six-Pack’ set of EU rules in 2011 – a key part of
the austerity-focused economic governance package – which
introduced a reverse majority vote in the Council: if the Commission
does decide to fine a member state, like it has threatened to do to
France, there will have to be a qualified majority against the
measure from other member states to block it. Good reasons for the
French Government to be slightly scared – and a weapon to be used
in its attempt to convince parliamentarians. The likelihood of
sanctions for not meeting the budget deficit targets is much bigger
than in the past, when both Germany and France escaped humiliation.
But how to meet the Commission’s strict targets, and how to behave
to the satisfaction of the Commission, is what clearly links the El
Khomri law in France to the austerity regime being rolled out from
Brussels.
Enabling demands of ‘structural reforms’
Being
‘in the procedure’, means you’re under close surveillance by
the Commission, and with regular intervals, the case of the French
deficit has been brought up at meetings with member states ministers,
who have assessed if France (in this case) has made sufficient
efforts to remedy the problem. Specific recommendations have been
made, though until 2013 the labour law was hardly mentioned. The
recommendations stuck to the development of the deficit, whether it
went down at the required pace. But in 2013, there was a new tone in
the Commission’s recommendations. France was asked to meet its
deficit targets “by comprehensive structural reforms” in line
with recommendations from the Council “in
the context of the European Semester”.
Structural reforms are no small matter. They are defined as
changes that affect “the fundamental drivers of growth by
liberalising labour, product and service markets”. Such ambitions
were starting to be pushed on France at the European Semester.
But
what is the European Semester? It is a procedure involving the
Commission and the Council that ends with a set of recommendations
for reforms to each and every member state, based on a proposal from
the Commission. At the beginning in 2011, the recommendations were
non-binding, but in 2013, a new set of rules went into force under
the so-called Two-Pack, another part of the economic governance
package intended to enforce austerity. One of the regulations of the
two in the package was about measures to ensure deficits were
corrected, and among other things, it made a
link between the deficit procedure and the European Semester.
If a member state is under the deficit procedure – like France –
it would have to draw up an ‘Economic Partnership Programme’ that
includes the recommendations from the Council –typically the kind
of structural reforms that would have a clear impact. If the
programme is not followed, then it will have a bearing on the
Commission’s decision to initiate the final phase of the deficit
procedure: sanctions in the form of a fine worth billions.
So,
when the Two-Pack entered into force in early 2013, the tone of the
messages to France on its deficit changed. France was now asked
to implement “comprehensive structural reforms” of
its labour law and the pension system. This had a bearing on how
France would be treated under the deficit procedure and whether it
would come in for sanctions, and for that reason, recommendations
started looking more like demands.
In
other words: whereas earlier country specific recommendations adopted
under the European Semester were just that, with the Two-Pack from
2013, non-compliance could lead the Commission to take the next step
towards sanctions.
“Slash wages now!”
There’s
more.
In
the early stages of the eurocrisis another procedure was introduced
that was to work in parallel to the deficit procedure: the
‘Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure’. This procedure allows the
Commission to monitor the development of member states’ economies
based on a predefined set of indicators. One of them – perhaps the
most important one – measures how high the labour costs are
developing (unit labour costs). If wages are not kept at bay,
competitiveness suffers, and measures have to be taken, so the logic
goes.
The
‘Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure’ is also a potent weapon, as
it can lead to a fine if a Eurozone member state crosses the line
repeatedly and for a long time. And France has been in the crosshairs
of the Commission for quite a while. Commission staff has
investigated French labour law and identified what factors
contribute “to
limiting the ability of firms to negotiate downward wage
adjustment”,
and the French Government has been warned – as has many other
member states – about developments in wages. In 2014, the
Commission said “unit
labour cost growth is relatively contained but shows no improvement
in cost competitiveness. The profitability of private companies
remains low, limiting deleveraging prospects and investment
capacity.”
The
calls for action to improve the profitability of private companies
have been sent to France from Brussels on numerous occasions over the
past couple of years, and have gained in strength. Thus far, the
climax was in February 2015, when the Commission stepped up the
procedure and singled
out Bulgaria and France as
the most pressing cases. The decision put France only a small step
from the last stage of the imbalance procedure, the dreaded
‘excessive imbalance procedure’ which entails – exactly like
the deficit procedure – a massive fine. If all fines are put
together – from the deficit procedure and the imbalances procedure
– they could amount to 0.5 per cent of GDP, or in the case of
France, approximately €11 billion.
The final countdown
Such
a prospect must be terrifying for the French Government, and in 2015,
then, it would have to come up with something of substance to appease
the European Commission and its partners in the Council. In March
France was given two more years to bring its house in order, and if
there was any doubt over the way to get there, the message to France
in July was clear. Country
Specific Recommendation number 6 to France under
the European Semester, includes a call to “reform the labour law to
provide more incentives for employers to hire on open-ended
contracts. Facilitate take up of derogations at company and branch
level from general legal provisions, in particular as regards working
time arrangements.” In other words, the very reforms now at the
centre of dispute with the El Khomri law.
The
recommendation was copy-pasted from a
Commission proposal;
one that struck a chord among business lobby groups. In the annual
‘Reform Barometer’ of BusinessEurope, a procedure set up to
influence the European Semester, the French employers association
MEDEF was enthusiastic about the move, and dubbed it “extremely
important” in its
contribution to
the Reform Barometer 2016.
End game
Who
exactly has done what since the summer of 2015 is the subject of
intense debate. French media outlet Mediapart suggests
the German Government might have played a big role in designing the
French reforms, while others believe the specifics were entirely
homemade. In any case, there is no denying that the reforms
were pushed heavily by the European Union, more specifically by the
Commission and the Council. And the push was based on the web of
rules on member states’ economic policies, sometimes called
‘economic governance’, that has been spun thread by thread since
2010. The strengthening of the deficit procedure, the European
Semester, the Two-Pack, and the macroeconomic imbalance procedure
have all been used for the purpose they were invented: to exert
maximum pressure on member states to adopt austerity policies.
There
are other similar examples in Europe at the moment. In Italy and
Belgium too, you see the effect of the new tools handed over to the
European Union since 2010. But France is special for its size and its
power in the EU. The ongoing struggle in France can be seen as a
major test case for European economic governance. If a big,
powerful EU member state can be pushed to attack fundamental traits
of its labour protection law, then the risk of new and stronger
measures are much more likely in the future. Even if French workers
are unaware of it, they’re fighting a European battle.
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