WORLD REVIEW
TRINITY NEWS April 21, 2009
11
FRANCE IN FOCUS
Overseas tremors are felt in Paris With mass strikes effectively shutting down three of France’s overseas departments, is this an omen of things to come on the mainland, asks Alison Spillane.
A
44-DAY general strike ended in Guadeloupe last month with an overwhelming victory for workers as an agreement signed between trade union leaders and employers on March 4th guaranteed a €200 monthly pay increases for the island’s lowest paid workers. The Jacques Bino agreement, named after the trade unionist killed during the strike, is comprised of 165 articles in total and resolves a wide range of economic grievances with drastic changes such as concessions on the price of bread as well as a reduction on the cost of school meals and a 20% reduction on the price of bus fares. The LKP (Collective Against Extreme Exploitation), led by Elie Domota, is the umbrella organization for
A poster in Paris calls for solidarity with Guadeloupe.
a coalition of trade unions, farmers coops and other groups that negotiated with employers groups and French government representatives for the reforms. However, France’s largest employer representative, Medef, refused to sign the accord and although it is uncertain how many workers in Guadeloupe are employed by Medef, members’ estimates range as high as 30,000 to 40,000. France has always had a volatile relationship with its departments, and the accusation that the DOMTOMs (French departments and territories overseas) are treated more like colonies than departments of France has been leveled at successive French governments. Wages are much lower than on the mainland yet the cost of living is higher due to a high dependency on imports from France. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that government employees working in Guadeloupe are given a 40% bonus in order to cope with the cost of living, widening the gap between rich and poor even more. Furthermore, racial tensions play a huge role in civil unrest such as that in Guadeloupe where the majority of the population is black but economic power is largely in the hands of the Békés, descendants of white landowners and slaveholders from the colonial period. Policies from the mainland have kept Guadeloupe in a state of arrested development; tourism has become the island’s primary source of income despite a rich farming
Gendarmie clear the wreckage left by protests in the French department Guadeloupe tradition (the French were attracted to Guadeloupe in the 17th century by the possibilities of cultivating sugarcane). Food is now grown predominately for export to the EU rather than for the Guadeloupeans themselves, as a result the island is heavily dependent on France for food imports. While the growth of the tourism sector, heavily pushed by French governments in the 1990s, has created thousands of jobs there has been very little investment in other areas, particularly agriculture where the lack of diversification means the island is extremely weak when compared with its neighbours in Latin America. As well as the French government the white population in Guadeloupe are clearly the other villains of this piece. But to pose a clichéd question; Can they be held responsible for the actions of their ancestors? They certainly reap the benefits and, moreover, they have done little to help their cause in recent times, a member of a well-known Béké family interviewed during the strike took the not-so-prudent step of saying slavery had its “positive aspects”. However, LKP leader Elie Domota gives as good as he gets, stating; “We won’t let a band of Békés reestablish slavery” during
Strikes – à Paris, c’est la vie! By Shane Quinn in Paris WALKING BY the Panthéon in early March, it was hard to retain interest in the soon-to-start Everton v Blackburn Rovers match due to a much more interesting incident that was fast gathering momentum. A group of students from the Sorbonne had occupied France’s premier law school, Université Panthéon-Assas Paris 2, and the Gendarmerie were doing their best to prevent the eagerness of the protestors from developing into a full blown riot. The students inside the building had opened a few windows on the ground floor in an attempt to let other protestors on the street enter and join them. Attempts to climb in by several students were hindered by a handful of over zealous policemen who weren’t too reluctant to deliver a few swift knocks to the head with their truncheons. The police had blocked the entire Rue Soufflot and began charging at the outdoor mob. The protestors soon Nicolas Sarkozy’s term has been marked by mass demonstrations retreated to the bottom of the street where they turned onto Boulevard St. Michel. After a few more keen charges by the police, the students quickly dispersed and my friends and I managed to get to the pub, though it was student politics, not the game, that received most of our attention. This was only one incident in what is now a three month strike by most French students and many lecturers, Assas being the exception. Assas hasn’t been on strike since it broke away from the Sorbonne in 1968. The actions of the students on 4th March were no doubt an attempt to garner support among their counterparts there. The strike is still unauthorized in many of the Universities but the Sorbonne has told its foreign students that it is now official and their time would be best spent in their respective home countries. In Ireland, it’s very hard to get
The full scale of French affection for protesting is shown in Paris students interested in any aspect of student affairs, let alone get them onto the streets at 8pm and risk arrest for a cause. It was surprising, therefore, to hear that on St. Patrick’s Day, while most Irishmen were oblivious to their surroundings, some 200 students from all over Paris, not content with skiving class and almost causing a riot at Assas, occupied the Institut d’É tudes Politiques (better known as Sciences Po) claiming Sciences Po to be the, “symbole du système élitiste et hiérarchique dans l’enseignement supérieur français.” (the symbol of the elitist and hierarchical system in French higher education). Surely, the fear and anger of the French students must be quite grave if it would lead to such a reaction. Actually, it’s not and the French will strike as readily as the Irish will sing. It’s tempting to cite Nicholas Sarkozy’s remark in 2007 - “These days, when there’s a strike in France, nobody notices.” The entire strike centres on what all strikes centre on - money. Valérie Pécresse, the Minister for Higher Education, has proposed sweeping reforms for the financing of third level education in the country. Those most affected are students on the teacher training course, CAPES (Le Certificat d’Aptitude au Professorat de l’Ensiegnement du Second degré - The Qualification for the Second level Teaching Profession). CAPES students will be denied their one year of paid work experience and will have to complete a Masters (probably an effort to raise more funds). Until now, the total number of students allowed to study for the CAPES was commensurate with the
demand for teachers. The reforms will create a free market system whereby all deserving students can study for it and then compete for jobs. These reforms will mean the loss of 900 university posts and pressurize remaining researchers and lecturers to justify the way they spend their research time. In addition, the lecturers may see increases of up to 100% on the hours they are expected to teach. As a foreigner, it is difficult to empathize with this level of frustration at reforms which will help end the cosy, lazy attitude that brought in the 35hour working week (remember it’s still only 15-18 hours per week for secondary school teachers) and bring the education system better results via a competitive market for teaching staff. So, what’s the problem? In short, the problem is in the French psyche which is inherently socialist and plagued by a sense of entitlement. I’m glad Assas isn’t on strike. As a student there, I would feel compelled to break the picket line and sit in an empty lecture hall just to spite the leftist fanatics. What shocks me is that France hasn’t gone the same way as Britain did in the 1970s. When elected, Sarkozy was described as France’s Thatcher. Historical parallels are often cliché, inaccurate and irrelevant. Watching this strike escalate, however, I’m inclined to think that this could be Sarkozy’s miners’ strike. Let’s hope he shows the tenacity and resolve of Mrs. Thatcher. If asked, one could detail the reasons for the strike but a single phrase response could be useful to remember if in a rush - “Because they stormed the Bastille in 1789 and it worked!”
a television appearance. Domota is currently being investigated by the local government for inciting racial hatred. Opinion about him is divided on the mainland with right-of-centre newspapers, notably le Figaro, painting a less than flattering portrait of the leader, citing him as “the uncontested and uncontestable” head of the LKP and suggesting his attitude is not far off that of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) whose motto towards the white community during the Algerian War of Independence was “the suitcase or the coffin”. Left-wing Libération by contrast describes Domata as a “calm and determined” leader fighting not for independence from France but asking for better conditions for workers and the Guadeloupean people as a whole and demanding equality with the mainland. In neighbouring Martinique, protests began shortly after those in Guadeloupe and continued for thirty-eight days before the strike was called off on March 14th after a wage agreement similar to that in Guadeloupe was reached between unions, employers and government officials. However, employers will pay the minority of the increases with the State, and therefore the taxpayers, footing the brunt of the bill for the
next eighteen months. In Reunion, no agreements had been reached at time of writing and the general strike continues. On the mainland, discontent has been growing steadily over the past months, as the country, sheltered thus far by an excellent social protection system, is beginning to feel the effects of the recession with unemployment at 8.3%. Although, while problems may be growing for those on mainland France their counterparts in Guadeloupe are in a much worse position with unemployment at 22%, young people being the largest sector of society out of work and a poverty rate which is twice that of the mainland at roughly 12%. The general feeling amongst the population of the DOM-TOMs is one of neglect, and the evident lack of interest from Paris at the outbreak of the strikes in Guadeloupe served only to reinforce this sentiment. Normally quick to react, President Sarkozy greeted events in Guadeloupe with a stony silence for the first couple of weeks, no doubt he feared conceding to the wage increase would spark similar cries for pay raises on the mainland. All in all his government seems to have underestimated the strength of this new movement where thousands of workers are not
only mobilized but highly organized, and what’s more Sarkozy et al have drastically underestimated the nature of the conflict itself; the economic reforms the LKP are calling for are inextricably bound to the long and bloody history of colonization that is its relationship with France. These demands have not just sprung up out of the blue. Nor is this strike the first of its kind in Guadeloupe: in May 1967 workers calling for a 2.5% pay increase were violently broken up by police with more than a hundred trade unionists killed. Exactly one year later mainland France was paralysed by the now infamous “mai 68” protests, made up of a series of student demonstrations as well as a general strike. These events resulted in the collapse of the de Gaulle government. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together so in the current climate where mainland France is seeing its largest public demonstrations in twenty years, Sarkozy’s concessions to Guadeloupe and other overseas departments, at the end of February he proposed €580 million in aid to four overseas departments, seem to indicate that he has learned from the mistakes of his ancestors. But will he nevertheless be condemned to repeat them? Only time will tell.