More struggles in France

Travel report on three struggles in France between August and November 2004

A rather mild autumn

We were travelling around France this autumn and along our way were at three very different confrontations. These conflicts have some typical characteristics, and can serve as examples of the various different starting points and conditions of struggle.
a) A strike by workers at a branch of McDonald’s in Paris at the end of August 2004. Most of those on strike were immigrants, the workplace has relatively few workers and “precarious” conditions.
b) An action day of Nestle workers in Marseille against the closure of the factory there in October 2004. A relatively large factory of a multinational company, with a big workforce, who are being set up in competition with workers in Russia, Romania and Mexico. How much did the high level of organization and the solidarity of the local people help in this situation?
c) A workplace occupation of Schneider Electrics IT workers in Grenoble, November 2004. Their first real strike and they faced the questions of whether to shut down the computer network of this multinational company and whether to kick out the bailiff.

These struggles take place against the backdrop of the (symbolic) confrontation between the government and the unions. There was the debate about changing the 35-hour labour law, the discussion about the relocation of production outside of France and the changes in the right to strike in the transport sector. After the reports there is a short summary about these issues.

Strike at McDonald’s, Place d’Italie in Paris, August 2004
This strike at the McDonald’s Place d’Italie branch in Paris did not develop the kind of dynamic as regards the pubic, as did the 2002/2003 McDonald’s strikes. Possibly partly due to the fact that there was no independent solidarity committee. There has been a lot of discussion about the role of these solidarity committees and the real meaning of the series of strikes in fast-food outlets and other small businesses in Paris (Frog Pub, Fnac, Pizza Hut, Arcade). Most of the discussions subsided again fairly quickly [Echanges no. 100/102 - <http://www.mondialisme.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=3> - see also the article about the Frog Pub in this newsletter].
 It has been emphasized that the strikes were mostly lead by young migrants who had not hand strike experience before, and in a sector that had previously been seen as an unlikely place for collective forms of struggle: small workplaces, of a few people dishing out personal services. The solidarity committees have been criticized for outnumbering the strikers at the picket lines and for being more active than them, and that through their media work the strikes’ actual meaning was inflated thereby creating further myths.
This particular strike began at the end of august, after a CGT rep who worked in the Place d’Italie branch, was fired. One of the reasons given was that he had eaten at KFC (another fast food chain) round the corner during his break. That was the trigger for the strike, but there were other demands: 12 percent wage increase, bonuses for time with the company, recognition of the right to organise a union, better work conditions and better hygiene standards.
At the picket line there was the following scene: the strikers were only achieving a partial strike - i.e. a few CGT functionaries and a few workers were standing in front of the restaurant, there was quite a few people eating inside - someone at almost every table. Many people passing by stopped for a moment and took a leaflet. 1500 signatures were collected in their petition on the first day. A few security guards and the manager stood at the door and people were not prevented from entering the “restaurant”, no one was spoken to offensively. At the next McDonald’s branch 5 minutes away, there was no sign of the strike.
On the first Saturday of the strike there was a rally at the branch. About 40 people were there, most of them with draped with the insignia of their organization (LCR , a Trotskyist party, CGT, one of the major French unions, les Alternatifs, green-Trotskyist Alliance). Two Communist Party local councillors came with a sash of the national flag. The door was blocked for about half an hour. A CGT leaflet stated “The hour at which Paris celebrates its 60th anniversary of liberation and the men and women of the republic honour the role of the unions in the liberation struggle, we should not allow certain multi-national companies to oppress us today, just as the bosses did then with shameless alliances so well known to all of us.”
The other things that the CGT goes on and on about are mostly the democratic “right to the free choice of food”, and the fact that a customer saw a mouse running about in the branch. On the following Monday the strike came to an end - or a “successful conclusion” as the CGT presented it. Results: McDonald’s want to take care of the hygiene and think twice before sacking workers. None of the other demands were fulfilled. Similar conflicts, usually where the sacking of a union rep is the trigger, include the RUC restaurant chain in Paris, where Tamil cooks were on strike in October and at Carrefour (big supermarket chain) in Marseille, after a worker was arrested after a supposed theft.

Action against factory closure by Nestle, Marseille, October 2004
In the following example of a confrontation against factory closure, the workers did not threaten to blow up their factory. However the struggles against company closure are the most significant struggles in France at the moment, in terms of the amount of conflicts and the strength and hardness in how they are fought. Despite this they have not been able to develop a really strong support or interest from others, apart from perhaps the mobilisation of local (politically active) population. As well as the actions around Nestle in Marseille, there are also the examples of the occupations of the spinning factory Vrau in Lille, and at the food factory Lustucru in Arles, and the blockade at Snappon in Chartres and ST Microelectronics in Rennes. Up to now there has been neither clear successes nor a new form of struggle that allow for new hopes.
The Nestle factory in Marseille produces chocolate and instant coffee. Three years ago 800 people worked there, now only 430 are left. The productivity has risen by about 200 percent and according to the union the factory makes a profit of between 8 and 9 percent. In spring it was announced that production would stop in June 2005 i.e. that it would be outsourced to Rumania and Russia. The workers could count on at best 10,000 to 30,000 Euros redundancy pay. The action day in mid October started with the usual human chain around the factory. About 2000 people took part and the CGT functionaries were sure to check that no one blocked the streets and everyone was really holding hands - give some people a walkie-talkie and an armband! After that was a barbecue party, a general assembly, lots of wine and instant coffee and surprisingly good bands. In one tent they were showing a video made by a fork lift truck driver from Nestle showing lots of visits by Nestle workers to other companies, trouble outside the bosses meetings and at the mayor and an impressive show of the Maori fight against Nestle from a Polynesian colleague. The joint demo with the Lustucru workers in Paris was also included. Copies of the DVDs will be given out to all the colleagues.
We were able to talk to the fork lift truck driver later and we asked him why the bosses had told them about the closure so far in advance, and thereby risked ruining the production for a whole year. He said that in similar situations the workers had spontaneously welded the gates together to stop the bosses taking the materials away. This time the company heads want to show that they are seeking a social solution with their early notice of the closure. He also said that the workers control the production in reality. The are only letting the products out after seeing concrete evidence, i.e. a receipt, because they suspect the management wants to empty the storerooms, thereby making out that production performance is low in order to economically justify the closure. Management points to the example of the factory in Mexico, where instant coffee is produced, as being 15 percent more profitable as in Marseille. The workers say that the higher productivity of the Mexican plant is due to a different chemical process which is used in the instant coffee production and which make worse coffee. As well as that the personnel department has reduced the number of temps from 100-200 to about a dozen. There are only a few immigrants working in the factory and most of them are from Italy and Spain, hardly any from North Africa.
The general assembly was not particularly spectacular. About 400 people took part, of which there were probably a fair percentage of militants from the various politico groups. As well as the main union rep there were speeches from people from the PCF (Communist Party of France) and from some Trotskyist groups. The contributions mirrored the various political tendencies, from the patriotic Stalinism of the PCF to the demands to occupy the factory from Force Ouvrier. Representatives of students and the unemployed also spoke. There was little concrete about the struggle itself, about how it might go forward, apart from declarations of solidarity with workers in similar situations (Lipton, Lustucru, Perrier). One bloke from STMicroelectronics made a good contribution when he said that one has to defend the company mainly as a base of collective power, rather than just focusing on the deterioration of working conditions. And one can’t argue from the perspective of a supposed economic viability because that often blows up in your face. He told of a meeting of STMicroelectonics and Thomson workers who want to build up a network of workers from affected companies (www.le-resistant.com). Unfortunately there were no concrete reports on struggles in other Nestle factories, on the strike in Germany or the action against factory closure in Poznan. We found out later that people from the Solidarnosc80 in Poznan had already written a letter to the Nestle unions, but it was not distributed due to language and other problems. At the end of the meeting a very respected colleague and CGT rep said that along with the concrete struggle for the factory he wanted to not loose sight of his own struggle for the revolution and that both struggles belonged to each other anyway. Then there were lots more statements about anti-capitalism and the new society. Nothing special perhaps, but on the site of a factory in struggle it sounds different somehow.

Strike and occupation of IT workers for Schneider Electrics, Grenoble, Nov. 2004
The situation at Schneider Electrics seems to us to be the most interesting struggle in France this autumn. Because up to now that have not been many collective and offensive conflicts in the IT sector so every experience is important. Because with the decision to occupy the office building the workers went beyond the limits of the bourgeois law. Because it was clear that they had to use their means of production and their knowledge of production as a means of strength against the company. Because they did not actually have their backs to the wall, it was not about immediate redundancies. Because the strike had a direct international effect. Because the strike and the occupation was initially not controlled by the union, but rather decisions were taken daily at a full assembly. Because the end clearly shows once again what the workers can expect from the union.
Schneider Electrics produce electronic components, from simple switches to complicated junction boxes. About 74,000 people work for Schneider worldwide. The strike was lead by the IT workers in Grenoble who play a variety of Admin functions for the company such as the intranet, the PC hotline, computer network maintenance etc. About two thirds of all Schneider’s IT workers in France work in Grenoble. The trigger for the strike was the decision by Schneider management to outsource the IT department to the company CapGemini. CapGemini already does some of the Schneider IT work - on both a contract and freelance basis. The decision to occupy the offices, and thereby have control over the actual servers, was also so that those workers could not so easily scab. Schneider Electric had signed a 10-year contract for over 1.6 billion Euros to outsource the whole Schneider European IT department to CapGemini. About 800 Schneider employees would move over to CapGemini, 400 of those in France. 500 people from subsidiary companies would also be affected. Other sources talk about 1,350 Schneider employees being directly affected in Europe.
Since June 2003 the employees that will be affected have waited for the results of the negotiations between management and the unions to find out about what conditions were being put forward for the shift to CapGemini.
Finally the answer came back: no guarantee of continued employment, worse work conditions, no compensation for those for whom the shift would mean extra costs and inconvenience and every worker would have 500 Euros a month less take-home pay. The financial situation of CapGemini also does not look so good: in the first half of 2004 they suffered 135 million Euros losses.
Some of the workers suspect that CapGemini got the contract largely because the executive director is a friend of President Chirac. One of the demands of the strike is to secure the work contracts for the ten years of the contact - something that does not seem to be the case with the deal as it stands.
Faced with this threat the employees decided on November 15th to begin an indefinite strike and occupation of the office building in Grenoble town centre. The unions asserted that about 80 percent of the French IT workers were taking part in the strike. This is a report we wrote at the time, after visiting the building:
“About 250 IT workers are occupying the main centre of the IT department and have shut down the server, in order to stop the work of any strike breaking home-work. There is Beaujolais in the morning, the atmosphere seems good, at 2pm every day there is the daily assembly. It is their first real strike and they say that before this they were more individualistic. The offices look out directly onto the World Trade Centre and the various other banks and glass boxes round about. One of the IT workers speaks German and another English. Neither are from the union but describe themselves as workers who struggle because they have to struggle. The say that about 60 percent of Schneider workers in France are on strike, or affected by the strike. They have heard from colleagues in Italy that the strike is also affecting the work there. Some of the production workers have given donations for the IT workers strike fund.
A few people go the other sites and branches to inform them about the strike. They’ve got an English translation of their leaflet and probably contact to Schneider sites in other countries. They are also in contact with some unionists at CapGemini who give them information. One guy said he thought management would not give in. The management was demanding an end to the occupation for new negotiations to take place, but the feeling was strong enough to stay in. In the strike kitchen it was discussed that the relocation of parts of the company to Paris was the first attack that they should have reacted to. They were also discussion what they should do about the bailiff that comes every morning and asks for the names of those within. They compared their situation to the conditions of textile workers in the region, when the textile industry was under attack some decades ago.”
During the strike there was a website discussion between the strikers and IT workers from other companies about the strike. (http://forums.munci.org/viewtopic.php?t=2026&view=previous&sid=93b1aced066109ed0945277a6aa38779)
 Amongst other things it was reported that the companies internal mail system between Europe and the USA stopped working. Some more possible actions or measures were discussed, but it was also mentioned that the really effective means of struggle were often thwarted by the unionists, because they could be help personally legally responsible for the consequences of sabotage. Others said that sabotage actions were unnecessary because the strike itself was enough to stop the server and the hotline functioning. The company management let it be known in advance of the negotiations that the strike had not had a big technical impact on the running of the business.
The following information is from two articles in the daily newspaper “Liberation”. On 23 November there were further negotiations but without concrete results. The workers ‘gave up’ the building, which was a management demand for the negotiations. In the building were also other companies. The workers occupied a Schneider call centre in a suburb of Grenoble as an alternative place. The management cut off the phone lines.
The official CGT rep said that they are not “Vandals”, that they do not want to destroy the work equipment, that the best weapon is “passivity”. They had the possibility to paralyze the whole network of the company, but they didn’t do it. They simply didn’t work any more, the people could not phone up to find out their PC password when they forgot it, there were no new uploads of the anti-virus program etc. Normally the technical hotline gets about 1,500 calls a day from Schneider employees and customers. One striking worker said: “We don’t like the transfer of Schneider employees to a service society. At Schneider we come under the metal sector collective contract. Service, that sounds like precarianization”. The average age of the IT workers at Schneider is about 45, the average length of employment about 18 years. The people talked about the problem that in the last few years one could take out a mortgage on a house with the wage, but these are not paid off and with the drop in wages it could become difficult to do so.
On 28 November a vote at an assembly to continue the strike was won by 107 out of 180. And this was despite the CFDT union, who had a majority in the company, announcing in the previous days that they were very “pessimistic” about the strike. The CFDT called for a second vote on the 29 November at which only 60 percent of the people voted to continue. As a consequence the CFDT withdrew their support for the strike, which really broke the strike. The strike ended 15 days after it began without any promises or commitments on the side of the management.

Some points on the general situation in France
Changes to the 35 hour law, production relocation, minimum service in the transport sector... Or at least these were the questions over which most of the confrontations between the government and the official representatives of the workers took place during autumn 2004. All the confrontations up to now have stayed on a symbolic level, and which, apart from single action days, did not lead to a mobilisation of those actually effected. It is mostly a political confrontation about how much influence the unions should have when it comes to future restructuring on a state and company level.

Changes to the 35-hour rule
The conservative government wants to bring in more changes, even after the original 35-hour per week rule was already weakened in January 2003 with for example, the extension of possible overtime per year from 130 hours to 180 hours. The debate takes place under the pressure of propaganda about closures, i.e. actual relocation of production. The unions say the 2003 changes are sufficient, and anyway hardly any companies took them up, showing that the debate is politically, not practically significant. The companies are demanding the right to negotiate directly with the employees over work times, without going through the union, something Bosch, Doux, Sediver and other large companies have already done. The other main issue on the table is lowering the costs of overtime for large firms from 10 - 25 per cent extra to only 10 percent extra and getting rid of the extra breaks in overtime work. With the introduction of unpaid longer working hours at Bosch which was agreed to by the largest union there, employers are seeing a green light for more demands. [You can read more about the 35-hour week and the associated flexibilization at <http://geocities.com/aufheben2/stc_intro>]

Relocations
This year the Unions published a list of 50 companies who have relocated in 2004. Microelectronics mostly moved to eastern Europe and Asia, small production such as household appliances and a few call centres moved to Francophone North Africa. Here are a few examples: Sediver, who produce electrical equipment, have said that if the 300 workers don’t agree to a 25 percent wage cut the factory will move to Brazil and China saving 150 workplaces in France. Snappon GDX, part of the US Gencorp car part company, who produce for PSA and Renault have moved their factory from Chartres to the Czech Republic. The machinery was moved under protection from riot police after workers had built barricades and chained themselves to the machinery.
An electronic car part manufacturer, Vishay, sacked 300 workers in Colmar and moved production to China and Hungary. Management claim that the factory in Shanghai produce at 60 percent lower costs. In Morocco there are already 60 call centres with 7,000 workers who work for the French market. It is apparently 40 percent cheaper for companies there with an average wage at 400 Euros, compared with 1,100 in France. There have been protests by call centre workers in France, including at Timing and Wanadoo. However, in 2003 only 5 percent of new call centre jobs of French companies were created abroad.
But these examples have been well publicized and are forever being used to push through worse work conditions. There is however strong evidence against this theory that all jobs are being lost abroad. After China, France has the most direct forging investment of any other country. Behind the real redundancies and factory closures there are other figures: despite the protested closure of the STMicroelectronics plant in Rennes the US company has continually increased the number of French employees from 2,400 in 1990 to 10,500 by 2004. Only 5 percent of the whole capital invested is invested abroad.

The minimum service in the case of strikes in the transport sector
There is a question as to whether this is an attack on the backbone of the last big militant sector - the transport workers in the public sector - or whether it is another popular campaign of the right to win votes by doing something against ‘the individual interests of a group of workers holding the citizens to ransom’. Despite the government calling it a “minimum service” law, what they want is not so much the guarantee of a minimum service (as they have in Spain, Italy and Portugal) but rather the duty to give prior notice of strikes. This would be an extension of the notice laws introduced by de Gaulle after the miners’ strikes in the 60s including details of affected workplaces and number of workers likely to take part.
The CGT are saying, “The best prevention of conflict is dialog”, signing “conflict prevention” deals with management and so forth. On 4 October there was an action day at SNCF for higher wages and against the changes in the right to strike. The running of the trains was not affected. On 25 November the unions mobilized for a demo in Paris with 50,000 railway workers and some strikes about pensions and also against the new “cheap line” iDTGV that is seen as a first step towards privatization of the SNCF.

[prol-position news #1, 3/2005]