EUROPEAN SOCIAL FORUM: French Victory Bells Heard Around Europe

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

ATHENS, May 5 2006 (IPS) - The success of French unions in turning back a proposed law on young employees is sending ripples around Europe. Other countries fighting similar proposals are finding renewed strength.

The ‘first job act’ (CPE, after its French name) had to be withdrawn by French President Jacques Chirac Apr. 10 after a long campaign by unions and students and teachers groups. The CPE would have allowed employers to fire new workers under the age of 26 at any time through a two-year- probation period.

At the European Social Forum (ESF) that got under way in Athens Thursday, civil society groups and unions are looking long and hard at the French example. After a long time, civil society and unions have found something to celebrate.

“The French victory is very important because this is the first real victory we have had after years of hard struggle against neo-liberalism and the policies of all European governments,” Antonis Davanelos from the Greek Social Forum, and member of the management committee of the European Social Forum told IPS.

“That struggle concerns all of Europe,” Davanelos said. “All over Europe governments have started to separate working communities, separate the young from the older workers.”

In Greece, he said, a law was passed a month ago to say that in all public sector undertakings such as transport, energy companies and hospitals, young workers would not have the same rights as older ones. “They would be paid less and it would be easy to kick them out after two years.”

Greek unions launched two strikes against the government move on December 15 and then March 15, without much success. But the French success is giving unions new vigour in preparing forthcoming strikes May 10 and later. Following that teachers are planning widespread strikes, roping in support from students.

“We have to stop neo-liberal policies set against the working class all over Europe,” Davanelos said.

The French intoxication is visible all over the ESF site, in the Olympics basketball and fencing stadium by the old airport on the outskirts of Athens. Civil society and youth groups are out in strength and colour – red mostly – but there is a hint of victory in the song and dance that inevitably goes with a jamboree of the half-left that social forums usually are.

If there is one obstruction in the newfound solidarity, it is the language problem. A French group has put up large banners with the letters ‘CPE’ painted in bold all over. But not many of the Greek visitors could hear what they wanted to from the French man at the counter.

They perhaps did not need to. Those three letters now spell victory to civil society all over Europe.

“It is France now. Tomorrow it will be Greece. After that Italy and Germany. We want proper working conditions, and we will get them,” a German student member of the Green Party said.

“The French have won a big thing for the precarity movement,” said her companion. “Nobody has been listening to the problems of the young in Europe before. Now they will have to, now they know we are strong.”

The ‘precarity’ seeks to give a voice to ‘permanently temporary’ workers across Europe, particularly young graduates who work part-time and as freelancers for years without finding a regular job. The movement has so far been particularly strong in Rome, Milan and Barcelona. But precipitated by the proposed French law, it is now most successful in France.

“That has to be the future of our movement,” Davanelos said. “We have to fight precarity and what they call flexibility.”

In this workers are not asking the impossible, he said. “If working hours are limited to 35 hours a week, many of the jobless will find work,” he said. “And giant companies must be pressured to cut profits and to improve salaries and increase jobs.”

In Greece, he said, some banks were reporting a 60 percent rise in profits annually, and some as much as 100 percent. “And they tell workers that they cannot be given more than a 3 percent rise. This kind of thing has to stop, and we will stop it.”